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The Cyclist [VHS]

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Right now Mohsen Makhmalbaf is the foreign film director whose work I am devouring at every opportunity. "The Cyclist" ("Bicycleran") made in 1987, is one of the Iranian director's earliest films but still evinces the visual sophistication that has marked all of his work. The title character is Nasim (Moharram Zaynalzadeh), an Afghan refugee who has been digging wells desperately needs money to pay his wife's medical bills. Unable to find a job, Nasim tries several underhanded ploys to make money, all of which fail. Then a sleazy circus promoter finds out Nasim once won a three day bicycle marathon. With no where else to turn, Nasim agrees to participate in an even more grueling test, riding in a circle day and night for a week in a vacant lot on the outskirts of town.

People pay to watch Nasim ride in circles, having been told of his dire circumstances. The event becomes a true freak show, as sick and dying come to try and take away the spotlight from Nasim to their own suffering. But even as the crowd starts to support Nasim, the gamblers and street vendors continue to exploit his situation. Finally, he becomes the unwitting subject of a wager between two wealthy businessmen, who have a vested interested in the outcome. Again this tide of inhumanity, Makhmalbaf tells a story of both exploitation and resilience, in which Nasim's riding the bicycle becomes transcendent, even thought the odds stack against him are impossible to overcome.

"The Cyclist," the winner of the Best Film at the Rimicinema Film Festival, is in Farsi with English subtitles and runs 75 minutes. Certainly it reminds me of "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" with bicycling replacing the dancing as the metaphor for the endless repetitive nature of human existence. Makhmalbaf has a natural grasp of cinematic language that make his films visually compelling. In this film the main actor is almost a cipher, given meaning through shot composition and montage more than through performance. When that stylistic flair is joined with a compelling story as it is with "The Cyclist," then it is not surprising that Makhmalbaf has created one of the most impressive bodies of film work in the world today, even more so because he lives and makes his films in a country where doing so could get him killed (see especially "The Peddler" and "Marriage of the Blessed").

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 exploitive wages, harassed by officials and just ignored by the bulk of Iranian society. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1987 film BICYCLERAN ("The Cyclist") 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 NUN VA GULDOON (released internationally as "A Moment of Innocence"), this is a memorable film and it's easy to see how it established Makhmalbaf's reputation internationally. Iranian cinema holds many delights, and this is one of its triumphs.