Sometimes, the immigrant experience of work is like the Sisyphean task of shoving a boulder up a hillside only to have it roll down again and again.
In writer-director Ramin Bahrani’s promising first feature, “Man Push Cart,” Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi) is our Sisyphus.
A former Pakistani rock star, he now works as a food vendor in New York City. In the wee hours, he cleans, stocks, then pulls, pushes and wrestles his silver cart toward its sidewalk spot where regulars stop before beginning their own workdays.
You can’t accuse Bahrani’s beautifully shot movie of false advertising. Man does push cart. And Ahmad’s daily toil of getting his bagels and butter from point A to somewhere in midtown Manhattan provides the movie its persistent rhythm. In fact, when Ahmad’s life starts to fray, the cart and routine offer haven and solace.
With patience, “Man Push Cart” reveals the man of its title. We learn over time that Ahmad is working to buy the cart from a fellow vendor. Purchasing the cart is one of those modern-day sharecropping dilemmas: If all your money is going to renting the cart and buying supplies, if you are forced to lug your propane tank home at night to protect it, when will your head rise above the waves? Is it any wonder that when the cart owner warns Ahmad to get insurance, we feel uneasy?
We learn, too, that Ahmad is a widower. (Bahrani is tight with biographical details, preferring to unspool the story in Ahmad’s difficult present.) We also see that his mother-in-law, who has custody of his son, is no fan. She stands in the way of the vendor’s hopes of making a home for himself and his child.
The morning banter – over a bagel with cream cheese and a coffee, black, thanks – gets a fresh spin when Mohammad (Charles Daniel Sandoval), also from Pakistan, strikes up an acquaintanceship with Ahmad.
The arrival of Noemi (Spaniard Leticia Dolera), a clerk at the magazine kiosk down the way, also brings new possibilities to Ahmad’s methodical life.
First-time actor Razvi captures Ahmad’s complex character. His dedication is impressive, his desire to reunite with his son commendable.
But Bahrani lets us become as frustrated as Ahmad. Perhaps like Mohammad, who recalls Ahmad’s previous incarnation back home, we are too ambitious for this melancholy soul.
Using some of the gestures of late 1960s and early ’70s film, Bahrani covers authentic terrain emotionally and geographically.
At times, the filmmaker pushes moments harder than necessary. A stray kitten is too easy a device to speak of Ahmad’s will to connect but also his faltering follow- through.
Bahrani is clearly attracted to the drama of small things. Disaster doesn’t come like a thief in the night – it visits in broad daylight.
Michael Simmond’s cinematography, especially in scenes of Ahmad muscling his way amid evening traffic and early-morning delivery trucks, is wonderfully true to the moods of a city that never sleeps and seldom nods at the hard work going on before it.
“Man Push Cart” | ** 1/2 RATING
NOT RATED |1 hour, 27 minutes|QUIET DRAMA|Written and directed by Ramin Bahrani; photography by Michael Simmonds; starring Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval, Ali Reza, Farooq “Duke” Mohammad |Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
