CYCLEMAHESH (Suhel Banerjee 2024) - NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2025 During Covid a young man became stranded far from home so he rode a bike across the countryCyclemahesh won the Best First Feature award at IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival and one can see why. This is a charming film. It's almost about nothing. Most of the time we're just watching a young man (three young men play the role, including the one who originally performed the feat) just riding along a dirt road in the middle of nowehre. yet it leaves you with a feeling of happiness and peace, secured by sublime classic Indian music. In the end what starts as a simple effort to set a record in getting from here to there takes on almost the air of a spiritual quest, and the film about it is playful and original.
It's not all dirt roads. There are some pretty patches of greenery, some strking sights. There is a spooky spirit guide, man with a large mask strapped ovder his back who speaks in a stentorian voice. He is the mask-wearing, poetry-reciting Khanderao, a mythical sprite, who describes their existence as part of a continuous gyre. "In the beginning there was only water," he tells Mahesh. "then came the forests. Then you came, and me! Then came fire, then again, water. Then you, then me, the king of this wilderness."
THe film is in Hindi as well as Odia and Marathi. Mahesh was a construction worker - sometmes they call him a plumber, but when he returns to the plumbing at the end you see it's part of a construction project. They say he became "a national sensation" by managing to cover 1700 kilometers in seven days to cross the country to arrive at his home. The film is docu-fiction. It recreates Mahesh's exploit, though it's depiction, not reenactment. How far anybody actually cycled in making the film we don't know.
There is a breaking down of the fourth wall several times. Once, the filmmakers simply stop shooting and walk into the frame. Another time, we see a policeman try to stop the filming, saying it can't be done without a permit. They beg and plead and apparently talk him down from this position. Or is this itself a ficton, as is the case in Quentin Dupieux's
The Second Act, included in the current Film at Lincoln Center series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema?
The film takes us through, the blurb says, "wheat fields, river valleys, and raging fires complemented by gorgeous sunrises and sunsets" and compresses into scarcely over an hour formal invention and original ideas "worthy of a film three times as long." So watch this instead of
The Brutalist!
What the blurb doesn't mention is the use of three different young men to play the role of Mahesh, with Mahesh himself coming in at the end, playing the game of Todd Haynes' filma about Bob Dylan using six different actors,
I'm Not There (NYFF 2007).
THe film isn't a dogged depiction of the ride. It shows two flat tires, and the very humble, artisanal solutions found. It mentions that after you ride a bike all day, your butt feels like hell. But it never shows Mahesh eating, or sleeping, or going to the bathroom, or goes further into the physical issues of the ride. It's indeed more a meditation on a long bike ride than a depiction of it. This in cinematic terms becomes much more interesting.
CycleMahesh, 61 mins., debuted at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), Nov., 2024, winning the Best First Feature award. Screened for this review as part of New Directors/New Films, MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center.
Showtimes:
Wednesday, April 9
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Thursday, April 10
9:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
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