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.

The Pool is by an American director, but takes place in India and had it's original English screenplay translated into Hindi with the end result having English subtitles. The film is a look at a couple of youth living in India and how they go about their everyday lives. The main character is Venkatesh who he says is about 18 years old and he lives alone in a bigger city and does various small jobs throughout the different days of the week to support himself and send money back home to his mother and siblings. We are also introduced to his much younger friend Jhangir who sells plastic bags on the street with him and after time the two of them have become best friends. After being fascinated by a beautiful summer house and swimming pool in a certain area of town, Venkatesh eventually gets to meet the owner and his daughter and soon gets a job cleaning up the garden and maintaining the property while they are there for the summer. The plot might sound simple enough and The Pool is definitely not a complicated film, but when you have watched the film and start to think about the different characters and their actions and decisions they have done in the film as well as their behaviours and what they said, really opens up a whole new way of looking at the film and it's characters. Everything here is analyzed and constructed very well. After awhile we feel like we have gotten to know the characters really well and at times they seem like people who we have probably known in our own lives at one point, or another because they seem so real and there is nothing exaggerated or over the top about them. The teenagers act like teenagers and the adults like adults. I know that is a very brief interpretation, but if you choose to see the film, I think you would agree that the way the characters are written are very comparable to a lot of people out there and like I said it could (depending on your age) remind you of yourself at certain time periods in your life. The film just had an authentic feel to it about it, whether with the dialogue of the characters or some of the grittier areas of town they are in to the story itself which is ultimately about one's survival in a big world and staying true to the things that matter to you and ultimately trying to better yourself for the big wide world out there. The film does have an authentic look to it, like I mentioned earlier, but it also has some scenes of great beauty and tranquility. The scenes in the garden of the summer house, or just some of the areas the teenagers go to are overgrown with beautiful plants and flowers and even though it is just a film it gives you a pleasing feeling watching it also because of the low key and slower paced parts of the film that make it seem like a very gentle and peaceful film. There are some sad elements to the film here, but overall I would not say it is a depressing one. I think for me the film offered a bit of hope to some of these characters and that some of the others may have to work on things a little more in order to achieve happiness, or what they want, but it is not unattainable. This is a film that left me thinking about it after I saw it and I really enjoyed some of the natural dialogue, the wonderfully written characters and the slower paced yet tranquil and beautiful aspects of some of the film's story, characters and scenery. If all of what I just described sounds the least bit interesting to you, then I recommend you see The Pool because it is masterfully done film with a lot of talent behind it and I am sure with the right audience it will be a hit.

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.

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."

"The Pool" is an excellent, slow paced, moving and an uplifting story of an impoverished teenager whose life changes from having an obsession with a swimming pool. I can easily say that the story being slow paced added an extra charm to the movie. The main actor, Venkatesh, could improve his camera presence a little. Nana Patekar(father), Ayesha (daughter) and Jhangir (friend) were spotless. I am not writing a spoiler content here, and would like to recommend this movie to everyone, not just for the ones who loves independent movies.

To you Netflix, when did low budget movies become documentaries? I like documentaries, and surprisingly Netflix recommended this movie to me. I am glad they did! :-)