Man Push Cart

I just came back from a trip to New York and I was reminded of a film I had seen a couple months prior at the London Film Festival, Man Push Cart.

The film so honestly and beautifully captured what New York felt like when I was walking in the bitter cold streets. I had liked the film when I saw it, but walking on the streets I could not get the images out of my head. It had stayed with me since then. The cinematography is really beautiful and the main actor is really, really good. The director said in the Q&A that he is not an actor, but a real push cart vendor. So of course I bought a tea and bagel from one of the vendors and said hello!

The film IS New York, but could just as easily have happened here in London. It made me look at that invisible person who we see all the time around us here in London and that they are people with lives, and dreams. Very sincere and honest.

It is a really good film. I recommend you see it.

Moving with a slow even rhythm, this film portrays a man's struggle to get by as an immigrant to the U.S. from Pakistan. His life centers on his work as a street vendor who must pull his cart to a New York city street corner every morning and sell coffee and such to the busy urban customers. The cart, like his troubles in life are quite allot for him to keep under control as he makes his way through the crowded NYC landscape. What makes the film work so well is the overall atmosphere and style in which it was shot. Ahmad is a reticent soul and much is expressed in his eyes and demeanor, his world is urban and dark, the vast majority of this film is at night and Ahmad seems to be living in a nighttime existence. There's a feeling of confinement and being trapped as well. Even when Ahmed loses his cart it seems there is no place to go to look for it. The relationship that develops with a woman that he meets who also works as a street vendor is tentative and cautionary in its process but also intriguing and sensual. The film is non manipulative and non judgmental, it's an outsider's gaze into one man's lonely isolated existence far from his past and former self.

I saw the film at the festival Mannheim, and although I wanted to stay some minutes only to get a feeling for the film I eventually stayed until the end. The film has a captivating, almost entrancing rhythm, like a song, always coming back to the lonely refrain-image of the protagonist pushing his cart through NYC. To call it "sad" would be like calling "Taxi Driver" a sad film. Authentic is certainly more appropriate, maybe even wild. Not in matters of dynamics but in terms of consistency. No fear to show things as they are. In real life, people lose their loved ones and can't replace them, they don't kiss potential new loves although they probably should and they can't take care of other beings or give life to their own existence if they are merely a shell of their former self. And who can blame anyone for not doing something that seems to be so easy for one person but is very hard to achieve for somebody else? Brilliant photography and lyrical representations of loneliness in an overcrowded place.

Man Push Cart is a gem of independent film making. It is a beautiful, haunting portrayal of one man's life in an alien city. A thriving metropolis like New York is home to a myriad of stories. In the course of our daily lives, we only scratch the surfaces of many of these. This film delves deeper into one of them - the story of Ahmad, an immigrant bagel cart worker. There is some optimism, but equally, much disappointment. Moments of happiness, and many of sadness. Hollywood demands that the hero gets the girl, achieves success, and all is resolved in a "happy ending". This film is unashamedly and refreshingly un-Hollywood, and Ahmad's ultimate fulfilment is by no means guaranteed. Nevertheless, like Sisyphus, he will persevere. When the cameras stop rolling, and we leave the cinema, he will continue. It is this, together with superb lead actor Ahmad Razvi's own personal experiences as a push cart vendor, that make this film so convincing and compelling.

This is a film that stays with you. For those of us who live in large cities, this film is a moving insight into the world that goes on all around us, a world that we skim past every day and quickly forget. Man Push Cart is a sympathetic, but not sentimental, snapshot of this world, and one that is well worth experiencing.

Reaching out with meaning far beyond its melancholy central story, this is an excellent film. It is, in simple terms, the tale of Ahmed, former rock star from Pakistan who finds himself, by way of domestic misfortune, pushing his coffee-and-donuts cart through the streets of NYC to make a living. Opportunities to escape his lonely lot come his way. Will he/won't he take them? But it's more than that: it's a story of the gulf between rich and poor; of the sensitive and the brutish; the pecking order of immigrants in the so-called Melting Pot; and of course the position in particular of Muslim immigrants post 9/11. In the end, Ahmed's cart becomes a symbol of the burdens that we give ourselves, that we don't know how to let go of, even when the chance comes to do so. It's beautifully photographed, superbly acted. A true independent.