Man Push Cart (2006)

Every night, before New York City wakens, Ahmad pushes his coffee and donut cart to it's usual spot on the street corner. As the movie moves along, we find out that Ahmad was a bit of a rock star in Pakistan. His wife is dead and his in-laws won't let him see his son. Did Ahmad come to America to pursue a relationship with his son? The answer is never clear. He meets a pretty vendor up the street but can't bring himself to have a relationship with her. It is slow moving but in a good way as I would describe it as a "slice of life" kind of movie. The actual making of the movie involved using a concealed camera for a lot of shots including a scene where Ahmad sells bootlegged porn DVD's to two guys. These two guys were not actors and didn't even know they were going to be in the movie. It was shot in less than three weeks on a small budget. This is a pretty decent film for it's atmosphere and character development but is clearly not for everybody. A true example of low budget guerrilla film-making.

With "Man Push Cart", Ramin Bahrani crafts a truly unusual and haunting tale. This is the story of a former Pakistani musician who now lives in New York and works a push cart. His life is mundane,and relies basically around his job. When he meets a fellow Pakistani, who recognizes him, he begins to open up to him. He also starts a strange, quiet relationship with a woman who also mans a push cart. But, slowly, his life begin to fall apart.This film is not for everyone, but, for those who like offbeat, strange, and quiet films, "Man Push Cart" offers an unusual look at human life, and loneliness, as well as living in the past, and establishes Bahrani as one of the more underrated directors working today.

The Film shows the boring life of the man push cart. He has no hope of changing his life. It is the same every day, repeating the same routine. He is unable to sort out his personal life because of his past. If something happens it ends as a disaster. The viewer of this movie is also waiting that something happens and that is the only suspense. The film is a bit boring. I suppose that is what the film director intends to convey. Viewing the movie is as boring as the life of Ahmad (the man push cart). The film ends as uneventful as it begins. The viewer (if he sees the film to the end) will think that he is lucky that his life ids different. I cannot recommend the film.

I watched this debut film of Ramin Bahrani at the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival. It's a very minimal approach to film-making. There is good composition of the many pre-dawn scenes of Ahmad pushing his cart to its location in mid-town Manhattan. The bleak scenery of dark, low-lit streets, garbage trucks, buses and the constant noise of the city mirror Ahmad's internal landscape. We get some small pieces of his story, but it's very incomplete. We don't know why he doesn't try to regain the success he had in his home country, nor why he sabotages efforts by others to help him. How does the girl fit in? My expectation for a movie still remains that I need to be told a story, care about the characters or be wowed by technique. This was like reading the middle four chapters of a depressing book. I have friends who loved this movie because it lacked those elements which I find essential in film. For me, the movie could have been a twelve-minute short, repeated as many times as you find personally satisfying. I did very much enjoy Bahrani's 3rd film, "Goodbye Solo", where the story is still minimal but the characters are extremely well developed. It's worth watching "Man Push Cart" just to see how well Bahrani's core views are being honed in later movies.