ThiefHott Too much of everything

Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

petrelet The original title of this review called it an "existential parable" but that would really be too much like putting the spoiler in the subject line. I don't mean that this seems to have an existential viewpoint. I mean that the writer/director, Ramin Bahrani, gave an interview in which he said that he was inspired by how the cart vendors of New York reminded him of the myth of Sisyphus. So there are no mysteries here. We see it too, as we see Ahmad Razvi push this huge heavy coffee- and-bagel cart the size of a minivan up and down the streets before down. The cart seems larger and heavier and more impossible to manage each time we see it. The sign on the cart always says the same thing: "Have a Nice Day." This sign is meant to be read by the customers, I suppose, not by the vendor.Ahmad Razvi is the actor, but the character is also named Ahmad, and in fact Razvi was not an actor, he was a guy Bahrani met who until recently had been pushing these carts around himself. Ahmad (the character) had a life in Pakistan as a singer. He no longer has it. In New York he had a wife and son. We see one happy moment in flashback. Now his wife is dead, and his son is living with his in- laws; his mother-in-law hates him and blames him for everything. He meets a successful Pakistani guy who might be helpful to him, and a young woman from Spain running a news shack who kind of likes him, it seems. But it's not wise to get too attached to anything in the world of Sisyphus. Not even the stone, er, cart.Well, now you sort of know the plot, if that's the term. And, putting it down like this, it might seem rather poignant, not to say depressing. And I can't say this movie is for everyone at any time. Honestly, more than once I was really hoping to see some little providential cliché that would solve Ahmad's problems, but the film never took that kind of easy pity on us.But on the other hand if your heart is open to it you come away from it with a feeling of having been washed free of attachment by a drenching rain. What, you want a movie with triumphs in it? There are no triumphs. We all lose everything ultimately. We don't take anything with us. The boulder always rolls back down over us sooner or later.So what choice do we have, except how we are going to conduct ourselves? After everything has happened to you that can happen, suppose that a guy comes up to you and asks for a coffee and a bagel. Will you give him good service? Will you smile at him from your heart? Will you wish him a nice day? Without irony, without envy? I think this is the question the film asks us. If you can do that, isn't that a triumph? Mightn't this actually be inspiring? Isn't this the way we can actually spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last day (to borrow from Robert Jordan)? That's what I thought, anyway.

runamokprods Slight, simple, but genuinely moving, and astoundingly beautiful visually for a ultra low budget film shot in 3 weeks on the streets of New York. A Pakistani immigrant tries to make a living selling bagels and coffee from a little stand he pushes around and dreams of buying. That's really the whole story. But subtly, fragment by fragment, we get glimpses into his life, his back-story, etc. It's life in bits and pieces adding up to a greater, much more powerful whole than the sum of it's parts would suggest. A lovely complex look at the kind of un-glamorous character we too rarely see in our films.

Khemaluck Deeprawat Watching a movie without a real plot can be difficult for me sometimes, but not with "Man Push Cart". I think this film is an art. It gives us a chance to look closer into a life of a seller on the street, to absorb his experience, and feel his deep loneliness.I don't know how the director did it, but these small details of a man's life: daily conversations with customers, pulling a heavy cart alone on the street of a big city, taking a kitten home and trying to keep her in a little box, etc. can communicate so much. Ahmad's deeply sad eyes and humble personality make me feel sorry for him, especially when you see him broken-heart because of love and friendship found and lost. The character is so real. I feel like I get a chance to know him. This movie doesn't have much of a plot but it does have a point and can inspire good things in the viewer. Some thoughts stay with me after the movie was over. Small greeting or simple kindness, even from strangers, can mean so much to a person. There are people living around us who have much more difficult life and if we can look a little closer and care a little more, this world can be a better place.After seeing Ahmad pushing his cart and living his life, I feel that the difficulty in my life is trivial comparing to many people on earth. After I finish watching the movie, I went back to my work without complaining how boring or tiring it was.

Kokomama **SPOILERS ALERT**Man Push Cart is a heavy, slice-of-life look at a Pakastani immigrant's daily routine selling coffee, donuts and bagels from a cart in Manhattan. His wife died a year earlier, his in-laws have his son, and Ahmed has yet to rejoin life as he continues to mourn. Ahmed meets a series of people as well as a kitten who can pull him out of his dreary existence, but each of these are slowly pulled away from him as Ahmed chooses to remain in or cannot let go of the life he has carved out for himself in the last year. I can be satisfied with an unhappy ending if there is resolution in the film, but this one does not have it. If the back story of Ahmed's wife and why he had to leave Pakastan were explained, this movie would have been phenomenal. Unfortunately, this does not happen, and I was left feeling unsettled with numerous questions and just worn down by the painful existence of Ahmed without understanding why he lives the life he leads.