**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval, Ali Reza
written and directed by Ramin Bahrani
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover As far as subject matter goes, Man Push Cart couldn't be more needed. A movie about an immigrant Pakistani coffee-stand operator is just what the doctor ordered in an American film culture devoted to the bourgeois angst of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (when it's not padding Tom Cruise's wallet, that is), and it could have been a real antidote to the same's anti-political "Crisis? What Crisis?" mentality. Unfortunately, writer-director Ramin Bahrani's feature debut falls into the most obvious pitfall of social realism by treating its central character, Ahmad (Ahmad Razmi), like a lost puppy. There's no real dimension to Ahmad beyond his social-pariah status and the many indignities he suffers–and things only get worse when he gets a sort-of girlfriend named Noemi (Leticia Dolera), who makes him seem more a bashful teenager than a grown man stripped of his dignity. Though Bahrani doubtless understands the invisibility that Ahmad and co. endure, his idea of a credible hero is a protagonist treading water.
Ahmad is closer to a laundry list of suffering than to a fully-functioning person. We know he was a rock star in his native Pakistan who fled with his wife only to see her die; that he mans a lonely coffee cart and does odd jobs on the side; that his son is in the hands of his dead wife's parents, whom he rarely sees; and that Noemi, the beautiful young Spaniard working the nearby newsstand, is his one oasis of hope and respite. Man Push Cart thus comes loaded with potential, but Bahrani appears to believe the mere assembly of these parts has him made in the shade. Not quite: the character is so under-drawn that all we really know about him is that he's sad. And, far from restoring dignity to Ahmad, the constant use of his situation to coax "awww"s from the audience makes him look even smaller. All hell breaks loose once Noemi shows up: instead of proposing a meeting of two adults in the same boat, the film treats Ahmad like he's never seen a girl before and Noemi like she's some squeaky-clean honours student who's got him tongue-tied.
Bahrani is young, so maybe he's interpolating his naiveté onto that of his character. Still, that's no excuse for the nuance-free depiction he's given us here. Though many critics have invoked the Italian neo-realists in describing this film, it's only neo-realist in superficial ways: the melodramatic aspects of the genre are here imported without the strong sense of setting, society, and economics, while the tortured innocence depicted by Rossellini, et al decidedly belongs to another time and place. To slap what's credible in Bicycle Thieves–from which Bahrani jejunely swipes his climactic moments–onto the bukkake-download Babylon of early-21st century New York is to court madness. Man Push Cart is in love with the romantic elements of neo-realism to the point that it can't create its own identity, swooning over them to such an extent that it blows the finer points of forming an argument and sketching a social process.
Most telling among the film's many loose ends is Ahmad's relationship to Mohammed (Charles Daniel Sandoval), the successful Pakistani businessman who hires him to work on his apartment. The obvious irony is that Mohammed recognizes Ahmad, raves about his music, then goes about exploiting him–yet the matter of how these two immigrants wound up occupying completely different stations in life is left up in the air. Although Bahrani gets that the gulf between rich and poor is wide and daunting (and ultimately, who doesn't get that?), the mechanisms by which some people end up on top and others on the bottom–especially within the immigrant context—are left invisible. Man Push Cart is in a position to fill in some gaps about how things work but instead settles for tritely devastating stuff like the hero finding a lost kitten and not knowing how to care for it. The film offers no insight into social engineering and even less into simple human behaviour; it seems to think the mere mention of life on the bottom is daringly political. Perhaps Man Push Cart is exceptional in the context of Hollywood liberal condescension and demimonde-hipster heroin chic, but this well-meaning botch hardly seems like much of an alternative to those shallow approaches to life on the margins.
THE DVD
Koch Lorber brings Man Push Cart to DVD in a sharp, creditable 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The Dolby 2.0 mono sound is similarly good, lacking a small amount of potency but delivering a mostly-solid representation of the film's aural landscape. Note that scenes in Urdu are non-optionally subtitled in English. Extras begin with a commentary by Bahrani, Razvi, DP Michael Simmonds, and AD Nicholas Elliott. They're all business when it comes to discussing the logistics of the very-low-budget shoot, discussing how they arranged the involvement of various non-professional actors and, in a more uncomfortable light, the passers-by who unknowingly became bit players in the movie. Alas, Bahrani's explication of the film's connection to Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus offers an unsurprising glimpse into the simplicity of the director's approach. Two of Bahrani's short films–both of which were produced in conjunction with various international film festivals–also grace the disc: "Bad Reception" (2 mins.), featuring a guy getting into an elevator with Lisa Bonet and having his cell phone go off (it's kind of lame and not very interesting); and the superior (if still pitiable and condescending in the manner of Man Push Cart) "Dogs" (6 mins.), about the plight of a stray dog being treated with kindness by various strangers. Trailers for Man Push Cart, La Moustache, Raining Stones, The Bridge, Changing Times, A Few Days in September, and Love round things out.
87 minutes; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English/Urdu DD 2.0 (Mono); Region-free; DVD-5; Kino Lorber
