Indie Highlight: Man Pushes Cart

Man Push Cart

Man Push Cart is the debut feature from American/Iranian writer/director Ramin Bahrani. It follows the day-to-day cycle of New York City street vendor Ahmad (played by newcomer Ahmad Razvi) as he ekes out a living operating a pushcart on a city sidewalk, selling coffee, tea, bagels, donuts and muffins. He leaves for work everyday by 2:00 a.m., carrying a propane by his side the way many carry a briefcase. He does not have a van to bring his cart between overnight storage to his corner, so he pulls it by hand, dragging the massive shiny metal box alongside traffic every morning, an image Bahrani states is a direct correlation with Albert Camus’s seminal essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Bahrani combines Camus’s unmistakably keen observation and explorative thinking with a visual beauty and avant-garde approach to filmmaking reminiscent of Jay Leyda’s 1931 A Bronx Morning, and carves a film that is simultaneously essay and poetry. A comparison to Wong Kar Wai would not be unmerited.

As the film progresses from one day to the next in the endless and repetitive cycle of work that is Ahmad’s life, we get to know him slowly, information passed to us bit by bit, much like it would be getting to know a person in your daily life, one moment at a time. We know he smokes Parliament cigarettes and that his favorite beer is Heineken before we know why he is estranged from his son. We watch as Ahmad goes through the motions, stocking his cart with bagels and pastries, brewing coffee, sweeping the sidewalk around his cart. He is one of many preparing for the day ahead during the dark early hours of the morning. Some of the film’s best moments come when Ahmad is manning his cart during these hours. Alone in his cart before customers have begun to arrive, he is alone with the city, alone with his thoughts, alone with his own life and its tragedies. Only the city and the day ahead offer any chance of escape, whether it be a temporary escape, such as a conversation with a friend or the distraction from thought provided by work, or the promise of a greater escape, through romance with the beautiful Spanish Noemi (Leticia Dolera—Imagining Argentina), or through a fellow Pakistani friend, successful and wealthy and offering Ahmad a chance for a fresh start in life.

This is one of the only films I have seen in a long time in which New York City is not only a setting, but also a character. At times the city that Bahrani and director of photography Michael Simmonds have captured on film carries the same surreal, dreamlike quality of films like Martin Scorsesse’s Taxi Driver and Abel Ferarra’s Driller Killer, with plumes of smoke billowing up from underneath the rain washed streets. Other times, the story the film tells is filtered through the city, with pieces of the frames distorted by heat rising from the ground, or in one particularly hypnotic shot when the camera is aimed out the window of a subway train as it passes by a station, creating an exaggerated flicker effect. The filmmakers know how to photograph New York City, know how to look at it as more than a backdrop to the story, and see it for what it really is—a constantly moving, changing, breathing eco-system. New York City looks alive in this film.

Bahrani’s film is backed by several years of research in which he interviewed and got to know various New York City push cart vendors on a personal basis, spending time with these men and their families, learning about their lives and backgrounds, and how they ended up manning shiny metal boxes alongside the streets of New York. This is in fact how Bahrani met Ahmad Razvi, the lead actor in the film and also the inspiration for much of the story as well as the basis for the character he plays—among other various odd jobs he’s held, Razvi had worked as a push cart vendor for a year.

Prior to making Man Push Cart, Bahrani attended Columbia University as an undergraduate student before moving to Iran for three years (his thesis film, “Strangers,” was made during this time, and also features music from composer Peyman Yazdanian who provides the score for Man Push Cart). He is currently at work on his second feature.

Films Philos released Man Push Cart in a limited release on September 8th.