The Cyclist

Makhmalbaf builds the race towards a crowd-pleasing climax, but the film's concluding freeze-frame entraps rather than cheerleads his underdog

This colorful film is more interested in delivering its message about how man makes man suffer, than it is in being dramatic.

just those shots of the Iranian desert sun peering into the well and into the marketplace are worth the price of the video.

In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion and civil war, hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled across the border with Iran. There they struggled to survive, offering themselves as day labourers at exploitative wages, harassed by officials and just ignored by the bulk of Iranian society. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1987 film <i>The Cyclist</i> is an allegory for the Afghan refugee experience, Nasim (Moharram Zaynalzadeh) must pay the hospital stay of his ailing wife and bring up his son Jomeh (Mohammad Reza Maleki), but even backbreaking labour as a well-digger doesn't pay the bills. When a local business learns that Nasim once rode a bicycle for three nonstop, he offers the desperate man the chance to save his family: ride a bicycle for a week in a makeshift circus ring. Makhmalbaf communicates Nasim's lack of humanity by giving him very few lines. Most of the film consists of arguments among the gamblers and local politicians who stand to profit or lose from Nasim's act, as in the background he circles around and around and around. This film would already be heartrending if it were a straight-up tale, but Makhmalbaf makes it even more poignant with a light dusting of magic realism. Though less elegant than some of his later films like <i>Nun va guldoon</i> (released internationally as <i>A Moment of Innocence</i>), this is a memorable film and it's easy to see how it established Mak…