Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Man Push Cart (2005)

Average user rating

No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

The cart is a mobile New York coffee-and-bagel kiosk; the man pushing is Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), a new Pakistani immigrant to the Big Apple. In his beautifully measured second feature, Iranian-American Bahrani follows this polite American-accented young man’s day – manhandling the cart through the streets at dawn, taking the A-train after dusk. His conversation is restricted to ‘You got it!’, ‘Cream cheese with that?’, or asking for cigarettes from the nearby hut operated by pretty Barcelona-born Noemi (for which, incidentally, he exchanges pirate DVDs). In this character study, Bahrani applies a minimalist approach, reflecting the subjective experience – he lets the facts speak for themselves – but his long, often music-less takes differ in effect from, say, Kiarostami’s. His movie is just that little bit less demanding; ‘directed’, attentive rather than serious, licensing the camera’s roving eye to linger over a twinkling East River skyline or stay on Ahmad’s play with a tiny kitten he finds.

Bahrani, even in silence, is eloquent as the Apu-like protagonist. Skillful, too, is the discreet way Bahrani slowly releases information about him (we hear, for instance, Ahmad had been a ‘rock star’ back in Lahore, and a couple of other revelations), inducing our sympathy and understanding and increasing the emotional depth without stooping to miserablism or sentimentality. Thus, what begins as a delineation of a man in a landscape becomes a study in sadness and stoicism, disorientation and even desperation, then finally, by extension, a delicate, rewarding and cliché-free enquiry into the complex heart of the lone immigrant experience.

Author: Wally Hammond

Time Out London Issue 1885: October 4-11 2006

Email Tweet Share