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The Cyclist

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A refuge from Afghan needs money to pay his wife medical expenses . He was in his youth a famous cyclist and through an unusual deal with a nasty mercenary , he accepts to receive the money with one condition . He will be the main attraction of a cheap, depressive and shameful spectacle. Nassim our man in disgrace will have to round in circle a small area with his bicycle on the outskirts of town day and night , for a week , without any minute of rest .
Along the film the sinister and unscrupulous businessman you will watch a filthy microcosmos composed by all kind of gamblers, bookies , food vendors and vileness people will come to see the great and original challenge .
This was one the twenty most important movies of the eighties . Winner of the Best Film at the Rimini Cinema Film Festival Farsi .

Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1987 film The Cyclist (Bicycleran) is one of those odd little films (a mere 78 minutes in length) that, technically, is not that impressive, but whose narrative makes it worth watching. Makhmalbaf wrote and directed the film, and also may have edited it. Its technical merits are few, save for the spare screenplay. There are, however, no greatly structured scenes, no effects of any note, and the most interesting shots are those of the lead character on his bicycle and another character riding a motorbike around and around in a pit.

The acting is nothing noteworthy, because all involved were likely amateurs. And, again, the camerawork by cinematographer Ali Reza Zarin Dast is nothing special; even the occasional quick cuts look more the works of error than planning. But, in just this first film of Makhmalbaf's that I've seen, one can discern that he's likely to be a more daring filmmaker than his main filmic rival in Iran, Abbas Kiarostami. That leads me to my final comparison of this film, and that's with some of the earlier film work of German filmmaker Werner Herzog. The ends of films like Even Dwarfs Started Small and Stroszek are certainly an influence, if not directly, than certainly in some collectively unconscious way. Yes, Herzog's two films are, overall, more polished, but especially Even Dwarfs Started Small shares a zeitgeist with this film. It is as if the films take on lives apart from their directors' wishes.

The DVD, put out by Image Entertainment, is of solid video quality, although the audio leaves much to be desired, in places. It has no English language dubbing, and only white subtitles (against the color background), for only 85% or so of the dialogue. Oftentimes this is the result of a bad job by the producers of the film, but, given the low budget feel of The Cyclist, it could just as well be that the translators found much of the banter between minor characters, and moments of byplay simply were not worth the time and effort, artistically nor financially. That's a shame, because some of the more revelatory moments in film come from the sotto voce moments between characters. There are no special features whatsoever. And, while I mentioned the audio quality being bad, that is something that may be the fault of the DVD company. What is the fault of Majid Entezami, who did the soundtrack, is the bizarre usage of musical interludes, often at inappropriate places, and often with music that is more Indian than Persian.

Yet, despite its flaws, The Cyclist is a film worth watching again. Sometimes the rawest of art forms can strike deeply into the percipient, not so much for the brilliance of its polish and skill, but just for the strength of its plunge, and the sharpness of its edge. This film is one of those films. It is not great cinema, technically nor purely, but it is a worthwhile piece of art that distills the pros and cons of humanity in a universal way, as well as specifically detailing the hues of those pros and cons to a specific place and time. Would more films and artworks do so, in a similar manner, both art and politics would benefit. As it is, only the audience of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film benefits. Good for them, and better for Nasim, and all those like him, who rarely get to see films, much less be the stars of them.