Dickinson College Dickinson Scholar Faculty and Staff Publications By Year Faculty and Staff Publications Summer 2006 The Cyclist (Bicycleran) Stephen Weinberger Dickinson College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.dickinson.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Weinberger, Stephen. "The Cyclist (Bicycleran)." Film Quarterly 59, no. 4 (Summer 2006), 47-50. This article is brought to you for free and open access by Dickinson Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. While this film and the two that followed supported The Cyclist the ideals of the revolution, Makhmalbaf's increasing {Bicycleran) dedication to art seems to have shaken his ideological certainties. By about 1984, he was also becoming disil• Director, Writer: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Cinematography: Ali Reza lusioned with the new government, which, he felt, was Zarrindast. Music: Majid Entezami. © 1987 Janbazan Foundation. committed more to rhetoric than to making necessary changes in Iran In 1997, as he was leaving a retrospective on the films of Questioning what he had previously accepted Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Canadian film critic Donato without question, the absolutes that had composed his Totaro overheard one enthusiastic viewer remark: "ca, world view gradually gave way to subjectivism where c'est cinema d'auteur." As international admiration has "there is no center of truth ... I've moved toward life grown for the achievements of the Iranian film industry and humanity, away from deadly serious subjects."5 during the past two decades,' so too has the stature and No longer associated with any political or religious prestige of Makhmalbaf. While Abbas Kiarostami re• movement, Makhmalbaf today uses his stature to en• mains perhaps the most well known and respected of courage others to thoughtfully make their own choices Iran's filmmakers, the enormously talented, eclectic, rather than uncritically following others, including and imaginative Makhmalbaf is clearly the leading fig• himself. ure among the new generation of Iranian directors. As he surveys his life to this point, he presents it as As remarkable as his films are, Makhmalbaf's back• a series of dramatic changes that directed and clarified ground and path to filmmaking are perhaps even more his focus. "When I was a child, I started going to the so.3 Growing up in a deeply religious, lower-middle• mosque; I wanted to save humanity. After growing a lit• class family, he became a dedicated and active Muslim tle older, I wanted to save my country; now, I think, I revolutionary in his early teens. At seventeen, his failed make films in order to save myself."6 attempt at killing a policeman landed him in jail, where What accompanies Makhmalbaf's remarkable he remained until 1978, when the Shah's government transformation from an Islamic revolutionary to a hu• crumbled. Upon his release, he served in the Islamic manist artist is a striking openness, and a passion to government, selecting people to fill various ministerial discover as many points of view as possible on a given positions. Very quickly, however, his hopes for a new subject. In discussing how he educated himself about Iran were shaken, as he watched the various factions filmmaking, the former ideologue explains that: "I used emerge in the struggle for power. "Fascism took hold. the same method I had used in prison, something that And I decided right then that even if we were to I'd learned from the other prisoners. It was to collect undergo thirty more revolutions ... until our culture everything I could on a certain topic, read it all com• undergoes an essential change, nothing will be altered." paratively, and come to some conclusion."7 This ap• After six months, he left government service to proach helps to explain Makhmalbaf's personal and work in radio as a writer. Here again, factionalism dom• extremely eclectic style. In contrast to his first films, inated, as three groups vied with one another to present which revealed the filmmaker's inexperience and lack their message to the public. It was during this period of formal training, those of his second period, which that Makhmalbaf disassociated himself from all politi• dates from about 1986, clearly benefited from his ex• cal organizations. Despite the continued efforts by the tensive reading about filmmaking techniques and from various groups to win him over, he refused to join any the availability of video archives that the revolutionary of them. committees had established. Although he claims that However, regardless of his disillusionment with literature was more important than films in his devel• revolutionary politics, Makhmalbaf remained dedi• opment and has a poor opinion of most of those he cated to the ideals of the revolution. When his position watched, he does think highly of Hitchcock's The Birds at the radio station ended, he decided that he could best ( 1963), De Sica' s The Bicycle Thief ( 1948), and Wenders' aid the revolution through art. Condemning both pre• Wings of Desire (1987).8 revolutionary and secular art as corrupt, he dedicated Having lost confidence that the revolutionary gov• himself with the fervor of a committed ideologue to ernment would improve peoples' lives, Makhmalbaf creating a true Islamic art. In 1982, with little formal made three films in this period which address social education, having spent a month studying the technical problems. One of these is The Cyclist (1987). It ap• aspects of filmmaking, and without ever having han• peared at numerous film festivals and won the Best dled a camera before, he made Nasuh's Repentance. Film Award at the 1989 Rimini Festival and the 1991 47 Film Quarterly, Vol. 59, Issue 4, pages 47-50. ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630. © 2006 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Pres s's Rights and Permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. Hawaii Festival. In many ways, this film is the work of a At one point he even fakes a suicide attempt in order to man who is beginning to hit his stride as a filmmaker. gain sympathy and money, but to no avail. Eventually This film, like so many other post-revolutionary he comes to the attention of a disreputable entrepre• Iranian films, is very much in the Italian neorealist tra• neur who has learned that in Afghanistan, Nasim was dition. This style focuses on ordinary, usually working• an endurance bicycling champion, having ridden for class, people struggling with a single large problem. three consecutive days without stopping. Sensing an Most, if not all, of the action occurs on location and opportunity to make money, the man proposes that if usually outdoors. The environment in which the action Nasim can ride for seven straight days, he will give him occurs can best be described as secular and humanistic. the money for Aya's operation. With no alternative, Even though Iran is a thoroughly Islamic country with Nasim accepts the offer and the entrepreneur immedi• a very visible and influential clergy, religion has little ately makes plans to enclose a vacant lot in order to place in these films. The main characters must resolve charge an admission fee, as well as encourage betting their problems using their own natural abilities. They on the outcome of Nasim's ordeal. do not look for divine or ecclesiastical aid, nor do they In many respects, The Cyclist has much in common receive it. Moreover, these films emphasize individual• with the greatest of Italian neorealist films, The Bicycle ism. While the main characters are part of a highly Thief Each film concerns the plight of good but im• structured society, they receive little if any help from poverished men, Nasim and Antonio Ricci, and bicycles other people or from social institutions. They struggle are the means of solving their problems. For Nasim, with a problem that is of enormous importance to completing a seven-day marathon will provide the them, but is of little concern to society. And finally, money for his wife's operation. For Antonio, the bicycle these films tend to be open-ended. Although Iranian will provide employment putting up posters in Rome. films usually end with a sense of optimism while Italian After years of being unemployed, he finally has the neorealist films tend to be pessimistic or tragic, neither opportunity to support his family and regain his self• offers clear closure. For better or worse, life goes on, respect. Accompanying each man is a devoted young and the audience is left to speculate about what follows. son, Jomeh and Bruno. Furthermore, these men live in The film was inspired by an experience from societies with widespread poverty where people are so Makhmalbaf's youth.9 When he was ten, a Pakistani absorbed with their own welfare that they have little cyclist-''A tall thin man with a black top coat and a awareness of or interest in the concerns of others. Al• tired face"'0-came to Tehran and proposed to ride for though institutions such as the police, the church, and ten consecutive days to raise money for flood victims. government are prominent in these societies, they are Viewers paid a small fee to enter the coliseum. Within a of no help to either Nasim or Antonio. few days, a bazaar appeared with merchants hawking For Antonio, the problem begins with the theft of their wares. Many in the crowd were skeptical of the his bike on his very first day at work. In desperation, he entire enterprise, believing that the cyclist slept when first reports the incident to the police, but quickly real• people went home for the night.