Can someone please let me know how the story ends.....I mean all it ends is with the guy losing his cart and he is babysitting another cart and then it closes. I mean does he better himself or get out of the cart raket or what????
I mean at least provide a little closure..........
I don't know. Perhaps I was as puzzled by it as you are. I guess that, and the absolutely useless intervention in the plot of the spanish girl, are the film's two major shortcomings. You can always think the author wanted to convey a message of Ahmad's unresolved loneliness, but I guess that thought is somehow generous from me.
Other than that I enjoyed the film.
I felt the same way - I wanted a luttle closure, even if it wasn't a happy ending. Seemed like they didn't have an ending at all.
Other than that, I really liked this film.
- Bill
I, too, thought it ended abruptly, but perhaps that was the whole point. Life isn't about neatly tied up endings and resolutions. The film begins with Ahmad as a man with little stake in life and what was important has been taken from him (his son Sajjad & deceased wife).
The film offers hope at one point (the tentative romance with the Spanish girl, the promise of a tour, Ahmad even starts writing at one point), but these are soon dashed. At the end, he loses even the little he possessed and is just another face in the Big Apple. Perhaps the film's strength is in giving this man a voice as well as depth & complexity.
I took it that Ahmad is starting all over again. It reminds me of the myth of Sisyphus, the man forced to roll a boulder uphill every day and then at night, it rolls down again. He's forced to begin again every morning.
nqure hit the nail on the head, saying "Life isn't about neatly tied up endings and resolutions." The American Dream is all about Hollywood Happy Endings, but it doesn't always happen that way.
Are you sure it reminds you of that, or did you read it in Roger Ebert's review? :-))
shareAstute observation! In the extras of the DVD the director's commentary says that Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" was a source of inspiration for the film.
shareI took it that Ahmad is starting all over again. It reminds me of the myth of Sisyphus, the man forced to roll a boulder uphill every day and then at night, it rolls down again. He's forced to begin again every morning.
Wow....that's intelligent. I wish I was smart enough to watch the special features.
Is it that hard of a connection to make? Camus isn't exactly obscure literature and the connection is very much apparent. All I had was an .avi with no dvd extras and I was able to put that together. I mean...half the film is him pushing his cart two and from the corner.
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Agreed. It's sad that two posters couldn't possibly imagine someone seeing a Sisyphus reference in this film unless it were cribbed from something else. This about a film that features a man repeatedly pulling and pushing a large object trying to get somewhere and yet never getting any progress.
Just shows how culturally bankrupt so much of our society has become.
Add to that the OP who requires 'closure'. If that's what he requires, perhaps he should have found a trailer for MPC that tells what the story is about and how it ends so that he would have known in advance if he was going to like the story.
Nevertheless, I rather hated the film. The acting was amateurish and wooden, and the chance of a cart being moved out of sight in the brief time he was around the corner was beyond belief.
well what i thought and still think is that at the end you see all these lights on the trees that slowly fade, those lights burning represented the life ahmad had as a rock star and that little bit of hope that he carried in NYC, whilst with the lights fading..it represents his present situation.
sharei just saw this film and a question and answer session with the director at uncg. he was asked after the screening what the ending meant, and he basically said movies that wrap up everything neatly insult the audience, and that he wanted his film to make the audience participants. not sure if that helps.
wildavisproductions.com
"i just saw this film and a question and answer session with the director at uncg. he was asked after the screening what the ending meant, and he basically said movies that wrap up everything neatly insult the audience, and that he wanted his film to make the audience participants. not sure if that helps."
What a bloody cop-out. It's not our story, it's HIS story. HE'S the one telling it. If he didn't want to finish it, he shouldn't have started it and left his audience hanging. Oh, and "wrapping up everything neatly" and "leaving the audience completely guessing" is a false dilemma. There's a lot of room in between, and it would have been nice if he had at least given us some indication as to why we just spent 90 minutes of our time watching a completely uninteresting, ordinary man leading a completely uninteresting, ordinary life.
I don't think that's a cop-out. A lot of musicians get asked what certain songs mean and they usually say it is up to the listener to put their meaning into it. So they provide the framework and it is up to us to fill in the blanks based on our experience. And I think when the musician does say what a song is exactly about, it tends to disappoint some people because maybe it's not what they thought it was about. Maybe the song was an inspiration during a hard time and now that personal meaning is gone when the actual meaning has been made clear.
It is ok for cinema to have some of this in it. Although I agree the ending could have been better. Hopefully we will see better things from this young director in the future.
For me, the guy was already 'dead' when his wife past away and he 'lost' his son, and through the film you can see that even when life gives him another chance he has not the strength to move forward. All the other characters are used to show that. He's just waiting to die.
I guess the movie is very good because it makes you feel sad, and you really expect that something good will happen... he just can't move on. Interesting movie.
What I want to know is, was he legal, and why did he come to the US if he was a 'rock star' in Pakistan? I didn't know rock and roll was allowed in Pakistan - bit western, isn't it??
shareIt is huge in Pakistan.
www.thebandcall.com
www.stringsonline.com
www.junoon.com
Just to name a few bands...
I didn't find that the lights dimming represented Ahmed's hopes being extinguished, but rather signaled that dawn (and the sun) was near and a new day was beginning. If you remember wayyy back to the beginning of the film, it began with Ahmed stacking pastries, and preparing the cart, just as it ended. It was at that point that he realized that this day is a new day, and he will make it. The difference with the day in the final scene, however, was that he was helping out in his friend's cart, and had lost his own. Perhaps this was alluding to the wiping of the slate for him.
I also felt this was a relatively correct representation of daily life in New York City for many who have immigrated here in hopes of a more prosperous future.
My wife is convinced that he killed the old guy sometime after the old man went to check on his van, and he has now taken over the old guy's cart. She's convinced.
Granted, my wife was in and out of the room while the movie was on, and not paying fully attention, but she's convinced that's what must have happened, and you know what? I find that a satisfying conclusion, so I'm going with it.
Since we were never given any clues as to the death of his wife, I'm gonna assume he killed her, too. Probably that's how he got his first cart.
Idiot filmmaker. Telling us it's an insult to the audience if he tells us what his story is about. I'll tell you what's an insult. It's an insult to imply that you have a story to tell, sucker the audience in, and then tell them they figure the story out for themselves.
And are we really to believe the guy can go around the corner for a minute and somebody can walk off with his huge cart without leaving a trace? Clearly, all those scenes of showing him struggling to push this behemoth down the street every morning were hyperbolic, as any competent pickpocket could wander by and make off with it at any time.
I guess it's a good thing this guy didn't have custody of his kid, if he can turn his back and lose a half-ton deli.
Have you ever heard of a truck? You know, those big things that can carry lots and lots of freight around? It would be easy to wheel one of those things into a truck and take off with it. The theft of a cart like that was obviously a set-up, I can't imagine they are prone to opportunistic theft. It was probably his father-in-law, because his mother-in-law was adamant that he was no longer Sayyad's father, and would have been delighted if Ahmad had to return to Lahore.
As to how he got his first cart, if you'd been paying attention instead of wishing you'd picked out some mindless rubbish that told you how and what to think, you'd have seen that he contracted to pay $20k for the cart and the pitch. He'd just repaid the first $5k so he got the bill of sale, but he hadn't been able to afford the insurance.
It takes a special kind of idiot to infer from what you saw that he killed his wife. What on earth are you on?
Why should a film have a 'story'? It's basically only Americans who need to be led by the hand - other people would accept that this is a segment of somebody's life story. We don't know why he lost his 'star' status in Pakistan, we don't know how his wife died. What we do know is that he has reached a point in his life where he seems unable to make progress.
Everything in the film proceeds from that point. He is obviously suffering from clinical depression, and that's the main reason he was unable to be more positive with Noe, even though it seemed that she would have been keen to have taken the relationship further.
It seems to me that you would be far better off watching action and superhero films where your brain input is not required. Multi-tasking is, it seems, not for you.
Considering the filmmaker is American, I don't think all Americans are as lame as you think.
I agree with rockwaterman-1 about the cart theft being hard to believe. Wheeling the cart into a truck makes sense, though, so I can kinda buy it now. As for who would've set him up, the comments of the other cart operators in the garage make me think it was the fellow who sold Ahmad the cart. I don't think it was the in-laws because Ahmad wasn't a real threat to them (no custody lawsuit pending or anything). Yes, the MIL hated him, but the FIL didn't (tried to speak up for him to his wife).
As for the rest of rockwaterman-1's comments, I found them completely implausible and ridiculous but kinda amusing. Of course Ahmad didn't kill his wife or the old man! But if you hate a movie, I guess you might feel like making up bizarre stuff about it.
All in all, I thought Man Push Cart was an amazing movie, and I was totally drawn into it. I admit that I wanted a happy, loose-ends-tied-up ending (how predictable we Americans are! ), but I think the actual ending makes sense and fits the story.
He's American, but his heritage is Persian so he doesn't fit the stereotype. :)
I did think the guy who sold Ahmad the cart was a bit dodgy, so you could well be right about him. I couldn't discern a motive, but it was probably just greed and/or race.
And I absolutely agree about the film; I thought it was brilliant, and it has been well-received in terms of nominations and awards outside the US. I must look for Chop Shop now, which was his next film.
It's often nice to have all the loose ends tied up, but you can't do that with this kind of film. We're just looking at a part of a man's life, after all, and life is rarely like that.
I agree it was a good film , it left sad in that even though he has come to america that it is not in anyway a certainty that you will be picking gold off the streets. The road to financial success is paved w/ many hurdles and hard work and even that doesn't guaranty financial certainty. yeah it was sobering and realistic . Maybe thats our problem w/ the film . He did ever thing you are suppose to do when you want to make it in another country , he worked hard and long , he did grunt work , he saved his money , in america you are suppose to succeed . To put that kind of effort and have nothing to show for it is difficult to swallow.
shareThis is a movie about life and it is intelligent enough to know life does not always have storybook endings or a sense of closure. My only nitpick with the end was..how easy would it be for someone to steal a huge cart like that? Especially with so many people around. Wouldn't have someone noticed? Why doesn't the guy go to the police? There is no suggestions in the film that he wasn't legal.
shareI have family in the vending carts business in NYC. And they say that no one ever pushes or pulls there cart. It's not even legal to do so. Nor do they carry their tanks home at night. They get locked up in the garage where their carts are parked.
As for stealing the cart. Anyone with a hitch could easily hook it up and drive away. That is how all the carts get around anyway. So all the cart owners have hitches. But in city traffic it seems hard to imagine mid day traffic being light enough to drive out of sight so quickly. Also, the food vendor community would probably be able to figure out who took that cart, if it remained in the city. They all know one another's carts.
What about the serial number on the cart? They have to be licensed and their serial numbers can be tracked. Not to mention, you can't just take a cart and park it on a street and do business in NYC. You have to have be assigned a location and given a permit by the city and pass a health inspection.
Maybe he wasn't legal. Or he would have reported the theft to the police and tracked the number of the cart.
So, much of the plot was no realistic.
But I did find the film to be very interesting. It totally held my interest to the very end. I wonder if maybe the writer was leaving an opening for a sequel. With all the discussions and debates about the loose ends and nonexistant ending, I'm sure that Man Push Cart2 would do very well.
This reminds me of the lame ending of the Sopranos tv series. Chase left that up to the viewer as well. I hope it's not going to become a trend.
Be kind to animals... or I'll kill you
Ah, thanks for the details! I know zero about vending carts so your info is helpful.
shareumm, america is a melting pot.....so, could you be more specific in your insult?
which heritages DO fit your stereotype?
It's an equal opportunity thing - how can one pick a 'heritage'? That kind of passive-aggressive BS is meaningless. If you want to say something, say it.
sharean equal opportunity thing?....are you saying your insult of americans is meant equally across the board....unless, of course, they are of persian heritage?
because you said, and i quote "He's American, but his heritage is Persian so he doesn't fit the stereotype."
now, from above quote, it certainly sounds like you had no problem "picking" a heritage.
no passive/aggresive bs here....i said exactly what i wanted to say/question....i wanted a clarification on your insult...and i asked...it apparently is a difficult question and now has you speaking in a circle.
Haha nice KimiJ. Unsurprisingly, no follow-up from bogwart.
shareWhy should a film have a 'story'? It's basically only Americans who need to be led by the hand
I don't think the ending needed to have an explanation. The whole film is a character study of this one man, a portrait of his life. If you find a message of hope and determination there, that's great, but it doesn't come across as explicit in the film, which is fine.
"First you ask if you can be red, knowing that I'm always red."
The end for me was great.
(it was pritty bleak up till then lets face it.)
When he was sat with that blue flute feeling without anything or anyone, Altaf shouted him over saying his van had cut out. He said something about it 'being old and tired - like me'. He didn't try to fix the van - because there was nothing to fix. Wasn't it a bit of a coincidence it cutting out within shouting distance of a friend of his sat at the roadside looking finished ?
Altaf knew he would never accept the cart, so he just got him to pull it to his pitch and left making an excuse that he was going to check on his van.
In my mind Altaf had seen him and worked out what was going on, well enough to know that he could do something good for Ahmad in his old age. When the man came to buy coffee from him he realised by how friendly he was that he thought highly of Altaf. For me the last shot of the film was Ahmed thinking about Altaf and that he was a good man then it dawned on him what he had done for him.
Jonny I agree with you. I thought it was kind of odd that Altaf's van would stop working exactly where Ahmad was sitting. Then when the customer came up to the cart that gave the audience the indication that he was a well liked man. Earlier in the movie you saw him ask Ahmad if he could help him do anything and of course he refused. So he knew he would never just take the cart if given to him. Then when Altaf said he was going to see about his van and left Ahmad with the cart I knew he was leaving him the cart. Why would he go see about the van, he would of asked Ahmand to do that since he wasn't working. Then at the very end after the customer left after asking all those questions about what happened to Altaf, Ahmand started to polish the cart I knew it was then he realized what Altaf had done. It was his cart now. It was sort of like the scene he had at the newsstand when the girl started working there and the older man was gone. Ahmad had asked what happened to the man who was working there before and she said he was gone and she was working there now.
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the WORST kind of film viewers are the ones that need a freaking film explained to them. Why don't you try to make something of the ending yourself? It's a film about a man's *beep* up life and it ends the same way it started. Take you that long to figure that out? Go watch Steven Spielberg and enjoy his happy endings. People like you don't deserve good movies.
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