The Pool

This film is shown on Independent film channel, it's an interesting and relevant film. No great theories here, just Vankatesh a young destitute Indian boy trying to make it in the city of Panjim (his mother lives in the country and he brings money back to her and his two sisters).

He works as a hotel boy and also with his friend Jhangir, tries to sell plastic bags to street vendors to make money on the side. From the activities of Venkatesh and his friend, as they try to get a mango down from the tree for lunch (.."Is this what Goans do for recreation?"... , his friend Ayesha asks). They befriend her because Venkatesh tells his friend he has seen a villa which has a nice swimming pool and no one ever uses it. Ayesha Mohan is very good here as the girl, she is more stylish and her father is a businessman from Bombay who works there and owns this villa in Goa.

At any rate Venkatesh and Jhangir befriend Ayesha, they walk around Panjim, and he shows her the Portuguese architecture of an abandoned fort from years past.

The photography is real without the fake embellished "gritty" style. We could see much of the same streets in Mexico, parts of South Florida or rural America. The street scenes are of food markets and hardscrabble life which is just accepted by Venkatesh as a day to day thing. Noteworthy are the scenes when he meets Ayesha's father who mentors him, has him help in the garden and eventually talks to him about going back to school.

It's a shame these films do not get as much distribution in the U.S. It's a reflection of people just trying to survive. The initial screenplay apparently was based in Iowa, its the same situation there in this economy for many, so the theme is certainly relevant and effective. I'd love to see more of these films from Hollywood, and less based on comic book characters. 10/10.

This is a Great move because of the Characters, the pace, the story the acting. If you watch this movie you will come away with a feel good. I dont even want to give details. Its just a very special movie. Its simple, its innocent, its special, its humanity.

As silly as it sounds i really like the non stop ACTION or should i say MOVEMENT of the young main character in the movie. You will have to watch to understand what i mean. Cleaning, pruning, cutting, stacking, rowing. Its pretty funny.

Enjoy. Worth the watch.

Going for a swim in a swimming pool is an everyday occurrence for most young people. For eighteen-year old Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan), however, it represents a life of privilege to which he has no hopes of attaining. Poor and illiterate, Venkatesh is a tall, wiry young man who works as a roomboy making beds, cleaning rooms, and scrubbing toilets in a hotel in Panjim in the Indian State of Goa, a former Portuguese colony. His spare time is taken up, not with cricket matches or sailing, but with selling plastic bags on the streets with his eleven-year-old friend Jhangir (Jhangir Badshah) who has no parents and also cannot read or write. Based on co-screenwriter Randy Russell's short story set in Iowa City, Iowa and transported to India by director Chris Smith, The Pool is thoroughly without condescension or efforting at multicultural "sensitivity".

Reminiscent of the realism of the Italian masters and the quiet humanism of Satyajit Ray, Smith, a filmmaker from Milwaukee, best known for his 1999 documentary American Movie, uses mainly non-professional actors to tell a simple story about real people simply engaged in life. Many of the stories are taken directly from the boys' life and Smith wisely avoids imposing his preconceived notions of how life is there for them. That sense of balance and proportion is what gives The Pool a special resonance. Spoken in Hindi (a language Smith does not speak) with English subtitles, The Pool is rich in detail and feels completely natural, as if it is unfolding right before our eyes with the camera merely following the characters around to see what will happen next.

On one of his walks into the more affluent suburbs, Venkatesh climbs a hillside and sees a swimming pool in the backyard of a neighbor's villa and becomes obsessed with the idea of swimming in it. What especially interests him is the fact that no one ever seems to swim in it which he longs to do. Climbing onto a mango tree near the property to get a better view, Venkatesh thinks of different ways of getting into the pool and shrugs off Jahangir who tells him "The closest you're going to get to that pool is cleaning it." Venkatesh, however, makes friends with the residents of the villa – an almost silent upper class man from Mumbai (Nana Patekar) who offers him work in their garden. Soon he becomes interested in the man's snooty daughter Ayesha (Ayesha Mohan), whose urban sophistication would make her at home in New York or Chicago.

While the social and economic divide is too much to give Venkatesh much of a chance with Ayesha, they nevertheless develop a charming friendship and go on boat rides with Jahangir and visit an abandoned fort. When the three are just relaxing and being together, they are just kids enjoying themselves and there is no consciousness of class. The gap between them surfaces, however, when Ayesha refuses his offering of a cup of chai or some papadums at a vendor's stand. When the two boys bicker at the fort, Ayesha sullenly calls them children and stomps off. Eventually, Venkatesh is hired as a gardener by the owner who takes a paternal interest in him, leading to a surprising life altering choice and a new understanding of the world.

Beautiful movie. I am frankly really surprised at the high quality of every aspect of the filmmaking! Maybe the most 'authentic' look at people in India - and this is compared to the good (non-bollywood) movies made in India as well as movies made here about India. The sense of place is really strong. The story is completely 'real' without any tricks to make it sensational. The cinematography is really amazing, and the feel of the whole thing gentle and warm, without being hokey in any way. Using real people instead of actors is a very good idea - seeing this makes me wonder why we bother with real actors at all. :) I hope Smith paid all these people really well even though he obviously didn't make anything from it. I'm really glad that this movie is available on iTunes.

Well-respected documentarian Chris Smith proves himself a master of narrative form with this incredibly subtle and moving Hindi-language drama, shot in India. Along with Elite Squad, Edge of Heaven, Reprise, and Let the Right One In, "The Pool" is easily one of the best films of the year.

As a New York-based Indian-American filmmaker who grew up in Wisconsin and has shot fiction films in India, I was nonetheless skeptical about a Wisconsin-based documentarian, even one of Smith's stature, working from a Midwestern-set fictional short story reset in India. Western filmmakers tend to miss the subtleties that make India unique and exciting, choosing instead to exoticize India's most superficial differences, condemn its shortcomings, or talk vaguely about its 'contradictions' (when they mean "contrasts," revealing their ignorance of the same contrasts in any big city).

Smith doesn't fall into any of these pitfalls, and has created a work of lasting honesty and beauty. Watching it, it's hard to believe Smith is not only not Indian, but does not speak Hindi. I have been recommending the film to everyone I know, even more so on second viewing (at the South Asian International Film Festival, where it won top honors), once I could worry less about what was going to happen next and focus more on the incredibly nuanced script and acting, lush sound design, delightful score, and masterful framing and camera movement.

"The Pool" has the lyricism and humanism of Satyajit Ray, the simple strength and beauty of the great Italian neo-realists, and a great documentarian's eye for telling detail and feeling of captured reality.

I hope the film wins some year-end nominations and awards, followed by a wider re-release, because everyone who loves great cinema deserves to see "The Pool."