Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Navid Vaghei ¹
• Javad Amin Khandaqi ²

¹ M.A. in Art Research, Faculty of Art, Ferdows Institute of Higher Education, Mashhad, Iran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Art Research, Faculty of Arts, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

This study offers an intermedial comparative reading of Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl and Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry through the lens of existentialist thought. Using a descriptive-analytical method, it examines how questions of death, alienation, freedom, loneliness, guilt, anxiety, and absurdity are articulated differently in literary and cinematic form. In The Blind Owl, existential anxiety is shaped through interior monologue, metaphorical density, fragmented subjectivity, and a closed narrative structure that intensifies the work’s nihilistic tendency. In Taste of Cherry, similar concerns emerge through silence, spatial emptiness, restrained dialogue, road movement, and an open ending, allowing the film to suspend rather than resolve the question of life’s meaning. The comparison shows that both works confront the crisis of meaning and the consciousness of death, yet diverge in their medial strategies and philosophical implications: Hedayat’s text moves toward enclosure and negation, whereas Kiarostami’s film keeps open the possibility of reconsidering existence.

Keywords

• Existentialism
• The Blind Owl
• Taste of Cherry
• Sadegh Hedayat
• Abbas Kiarostami