MOVIE REVIEWS
Man Push Cart
Nathan Lim
The late Groucho Marx once said, “Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a bookand does.” Well, Ramin Bahrani’s mood piece, Man Push Cart, is about a New Yorker, Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), who is not looking to write a book, but has an interesting story. In the film, Ahmad says, “I’m just a Pakistani who sells coffee and doughnuts.” Of course, he is being modest. We find out that Ahmad was once a famous rock star in his native country and is now struggling to get his feet wet in the land of the free. The filmmaker attempts to beautify the mundane, the immigrant life, the impoverish life; and for the most part, he succeeds.
Hours before dawn, Ahmad steers his cumbersome food cart through the cold New York City traffic. At the end of his working day, he must push the cart through congested streets back to headquarter. Underneath his quiet and lonely demeanor, Ahmad has issues brewing that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t the clairvoyant type. His son can’t live with him because he’s too poor to afford a proper place that could house the two of them. To make extra money, he sells bootlegged DVDs of porn and paints walls of apartments. He, like most people on the planet, does not like to impose his problems onto others, so a lot of times, his emotional state in the film is unclear.
When Ahmad meets Noemi (Leticia Dolera), a Spaniard who works at a newspaper stand, his social life changes, but not dramatically. Their relationship is bizarre; because of Ahmad’s poor self-esteem, their relationship never gets a chance to blossom.
One thing for certain is that Bahrani can direct. I adore a lot of the shots in Man Push Cart. Some of the shots of Ahmad pushing the cart are just spectacular. The director does a great job of illustrating the ambience of the city that never sleeps. There’s a scene in which we just see coffee cups, doughnuts, and napkins, but we can hear the customers ordering, the cars bustling, and workers chattering. We get a sense of Ahmad’s claustrophobic and boring state of mind.
I love the film’s portrayal of Pakistani life in New York. It’s refreshing to see an ethnic group who are not generally represented in mainstream media. The characters here are not one-dimensional caricatures. In fact, a lot of these Pakistani-Americans are down with hip-hop lingo and enjoys Heineken, just like a lot of Americans.
Unfortunately, Man Push Cart never engaged me emotionally. I wanted to feel for Ahmad and his unfortunate life, but he’s too introverted. It was hard for me to tell if he even wants to move on. What also startled me was that there are these people trying to help him, but he’s reluctant to get ahead. Go figure.
Bahrani is a promising filmmaker. I hope he makes more films about Pakistani life in America. I’m anxiously waiting.
