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.
Review of Man Push Cart
