Man Push Cart

Man Push Cart is Ramin Bahrani’s attention-grabbing 2005 feature film, preceding Chop Shop by just a a couple of years. Once again it deals with an immigrant experience in America, but this time the protagonist is newly arrived from Pakistan. Ahmad is sort of an unlikely character. He was a literal rock star at home (a character describes him as “the Bono of Pakistan”) who, under circumstances that we aren’t told about , followed a woman who became his wife to the US, where they were married and she died, again under unknown circumstances, leaving a child behind. The child is with the in-laws, who are not inclined to let Ahmad see his son. Ahmad stays in New York at least partly to maintain the hope that he and his son can one day be a family. It is revealed in a flashback that the wife had a push cart coffee and donut business, which he seems to have taken over after her death. Why “the Bono of Pakistan” finds himself in this utterly impoverished situation, living surreptitiously in an empty apartment, and selling pornographic videos on the side to make ends meet, is a little hard to fathom. One day a Pakistani yuppie befriends him, takes him back to his apartment to finish painting it, and finally recognizes him as a singer. He promises to help Ahmad establish himself in the US. In the meantime Ahmad has started s relationship with a newsstand girl, but his “friend” takes over with her, and he is unable to pursue it further.

We see scene after scene of Ahmad pulling his cart through the early morning traffic of Manhattan; it is sad and frightening. He doesn’t own and cannot afford a car to pull it, as some of his colleagues have. It adds considerable pathos to his situation, but he also seems to take some pride in the cart (it having been his wife’s) and he does the job well. We don’t know what exactly we are to make of Ahmad’s situation, because it seems to be a largely personal rather than ordained by larger social forces. He comes to the US because of a romantic attachment, not because he is forced to. He struggles to make ends meet, but we see many Pakistanis in the film who have been successful, and there is little indication of systemic anti-Pakistani prejudice holding Ahmad or others down. So Ahmad’s situation seems more personal than social, and his fate (whatever it turns out to be) is based more on personal decisions than on larger forces.

Things go badly for Ahmad in the film’s last half-hour. Unlike young Ale of Chop Shop, he has no dream nor does he do much to help himself other than maintain his push cart. He’s an enigmatic and frustratingly passive character. The film leaves him at what appears to be a low point. Whether the film’s last scene, like the final one in Chop Shop, is intended to imply a hopeful future is unclear, but it certainly lacks the uplift effect. Man Push Cart provides an interesting look at a subculture of New York and a challenging character study, but lacks the power and energy of Chop Shop. Roger Ebert declared "Ramin Bahrani is the new great American director," but I’d advise in favor of Chop Shop and whatever follows it (Goodbye Solo).

One curious feature of the film is that Ahmad and the other successful Pakistanis speak American English that is entirely unaccented, using even such slang as “Yo.”