The Pool (*ing Nana Patekar, director: Chris Smith)

[filmifan]

i happened to stumble across this film title while browsing on Netflix. it just won a special jury award for "singularity of vision" at the 2007 Sundance festival. i've liked Chris Smith's documentaries, and especially considering their quirkiness and themes, i'm very curious to see this film. (also, having Nana Patekar in it is a huge bonus.)



http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2007/01/park_city_07_re_15.html

PARK CITY '07 REVIEW | Indian Job: Chris Smith Works Quiet Wonders with "The Pool"

by Anthony Kaufman (January 25, 2007)

In our globalized economy, it only seems natural that Chris Smith, director of working-class portraits "American Job" and "American Movie," would turn his attentions to India. In his assured, neorealist feature "The Pool," Smith tells the simple story of Venkatesh, an 18-year-old boy trying to make a living in the western coastal area of Goa. Small, by today's Sundance standards, but immensely resonant in its well-crafted storytelling, "The Pool" is an admirable continuation of Smith's interests in the social conditions that define us, and the desire to transcend them.

Like the protagonist of "American Job," but more entrepreneurial, Venkatesh works in a hotel, cleaning the floors, making the beds, delivering room service, and to make extra money, he also sells plastic bags on the street with his younger friend Jhangir. (The boys' plastic-bag enterprise is shut down when the government demands a switch to paper.)

But Venkatesh has bigger plans. Not far from his work, he repeatedly climbs atop a tree and gazes enviously across the way at a wealthy home and the crystalline pool that always remains undisturbed. Venkatesh longs to take a dip and see how the other lives, but as Jhangir says, "The closest you'll get to that pool is to clean it."

The resourceful Venkatesh ingratiates himself to the house's owner ("Salaam Bombay"'s Nana Patekar) and is hired to work in its gardens. As a paternal relationship gradually forms, Venkatesh also develops a rapport with the rich-man's daughter, Ayesha, a cynical, cosmopolitan-type whose lounging around with her face in a book is an apt counterpoint to Venkatesh's working. Eventually, father and daughter reveal a tragic secret that will come to encompass Venkatesh's own destiny.

One of the wonderful things about "The Pool" is how seemingly effortless it all is. If Smith has learned a thing or two from watching the movies of Satyajit Ray, it shows in his patience with the material and a resolve to avoid narrative cliche and never sentimentalize his characters, who are mostly photographed in a long and medium shots. Such restraint with the camera reflects a maturity and subtlety that is rare in Sundance's dramatic competition films. Outside of the context of Park City's rapid pace, the naturalistic rhythms of "The Pool" might be described as deliberate and accomplished rather than "slow," as some sleepy viewers called it (unfortunately, the film's press and industry screening took place at 10pm). Then again, outside of Sundance, would the film's uniqueness glow as brightly?

Do we need Chris Smith to make a Hindi-language coming-of-age drama when there are probably plenty of Indian filmmakers who should be able to do the same? The question isn't entirely fair. Sensitive to the culture, not only of India, but to those people who must work menial jobs to survive and dream of something bigger, Smith has crafted a quietly beautiful movie that honors both. Though I can't help but wonder how Indian and Indian American audiences will respond to the film. Either way, "The Pool" is a gentle rebuke against materialism and a heartfelt study of class (and racial) difference (Venkatesh is "black," Ayesha is "white"). It also culminates with a perfect closing shot -- the kind of intelligent, ambiguous and contemplative ending that one wishes all filmmakers would have the confidence to employ.

[Darshana]

I hope this turns up at one of the Indian film festivals in New York in the fall.

[filmifan]

yeah...i haven't found any news about this film getting a distributor while at Sundance, but i hope it's able to screen in other areas. or show on the Sundance channel, at least.

[alexaha]

Just found this:

Nana Patekar starrer wins Sundance award
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Sanjay Ram
 
  26 February 2007, 10:33 AM 
   
MUMBAI: The Pool, featuring Bollywood actor Nana Patekar, has won the special jury prize at the 2007 Sundance film festival.

The film, directed by Chris Smith (who has earlier directed American Job, American Movie, Home Movie, and The Yes Men) has Patekar playing a father whose son has drowned in a swimming pool. The pool is also an object of fascination by a street boy, who is ignorant about what has happened at that pool, so it is about how objectively the views this young boy's life.

Says Patekar, who has the distinction of being the only actor to win a Filmfare award in the Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Villain categories, "The amazing part of the film was that the dialogues were not written, the concept was explained to us when we reached the set and every scene was taken in one shot, we had to improvise as we went along."

The Pool is a Hindi film with English subtitles, which was shot in Goa. It marks the introduction of two completely untrained child actors in pivotal roles. The film also stars Ayesha Mohan, who will be seen next in Gulal, Anurag Kashyap's forthcoming venture.

It is reliably learnt that the film's producer spotted Patekar's photograph and interview in an edition of The Goan Times and approached the actor for the role through Anurag Kashyap.

 
http://www.businessofcinema.com/?file=story&id=2473

[Prem Rogue]

http://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/the_pool

The Pool
Director: Chris Smith
Cast: Venkatesh Chavan, Jahangir Badshah, Ayesha Mohan
In Hindi w/subtitles
Rated: Not Rated
104 minutes
 
Reviewed by Scott Tobias
September 4th, 2008

At first blush—and okay, at a second, too—The Pool seems like a radical departure for Chris Smith, the Milwaukee-based filmmaker known for offbeat documentaries like American Movie, Home Movie, and The Yes Men. For one, The Pool is a narrative film, his first since his no-budget debut American Job, which nonetheless had the feel of documentary verisimilitude. He also went halfway around the world to shoot in the West Indian state of Goa and in the Hindi language, and had the further audacity to cast non-professional actors in three of the four leading roles. And yet The Pool is still fundamentally a Chris Smith story, an expansion on his career-long interest in dreamers and outsiders who dwell on the fringes of society, but possess a certain audacity.

A poor, illiterate teenager from rural Goa, Venkatesh Chavan scrapes together an exceedingly meager income out of odd jobs, including working as a roomboy at a Panjim hotel and collaborating with his much younger buddy Jahangir Badshah on a side business selling plastic bags. From the branches of a tree, Chavan looks down at the shimmering majesty of a pool in a wealthy family's backyard and wonders why no one ever breaks its placid surface. He starts following the pool's owners—a father (Nana Patekar) obsessed with his garden and his daughter (Ayesha Mohan), a pretty sophisticate who reads a lot—and eventually he develops a relationship with them. The father gives him another odd job in the garden, and the initially disinterested daughter goes off on little adventures with Chavan and Badshah.

The premise sets up a stark contrast in class: What could be a more obvious border between the haves and the have-nots than a gate separating a ragamuffin from the non-pool-using elite? But Smith never brings the hammer down hard, and he quietly defies any assumptions about the privileged people Chavan encounters. The Pool doesn't seethe with class tension—or much tension at all, for that matter. It's a funny, sweet-natured humanist character piece that looks beyond such distinctions without entirely transcending them. Based on a short story by Randy Russell, who co-scripted with Smith, the film has a refreshing sense of proportion without seeming as determinedly minor or mannered as other indies. It's a vivid piece of sketchwork.

A.V. Club Rating: B+

[filmifan]

a Salon review, ending with release info:

"The Pool" is now playing at Film Forum in New York, and opens Sept. 12 in Chicago and Philadelphia; Sept. 19 in Los Angeles; Sept. 26 in San Diego and San Francisco; Oct. 3 in Boston and Denver; Oct. 10 in Washington; Oct. 17 in Atlanta and Minneapolis; Oct. 24 in Columbus, Ohio, and St. Louis; and Oct. 31 in Portland, Ore., and Seattle.

[Simran_Singh]

This film opens today in Toronto and Vancouver. The Globe and Mail gives it four stars:

Novice actors keep afloat in miraculous pool

[filmifan]

interesting that this is still floating around! never made it to my area, that i know of.

there's also a Web site now: http://www.thepoolfilm.com/thepool/

[etu]

The Sundance Channel on American cable television is airing The Pool at 8 p.m. tonight.

[alexaha]

will you be watching, etu? Then we'd finally have one first hand account of someone who's actually seen this.

[Simran_Singh]

will you be watching, etu? Then we'd finally have one first hand account of someone who's actually seen this.

lol! I saw it when it played in Toronto last spring, but never got around to posting here about it. I thought it was a lovely film. The episodic structure and slow pace suited the Goan setting, the three young people give very natural performances, and the symbolism isn't too heavy-handed. 

[alexaha]

lol! I saw it when it played in Toronto last spring, but never got around to posting here about it. I thought it was a lovely film. The episodic structure and slow pace suited the Goan setting, the three young people give very natural performances, and the symbolism isn't too heavy-handed. 

Thanks, S_S. Sounds like it's worth a litte hunt, in case it will ever be out on DVD.

[etu]

I agree totally with Simran_Singh's assessment.

It's very slow and that makes you feel like you've lived with these characters. It almost seems like there won't be a story arc at all, but even though what you learn is dramatic the whole movie has a very gentle feeling to it.

My husband and I both liked seeing parts of Goa that a tourist would never see, too. I don't know if I posted this review from the NYTimes before:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/movies/03pool.html

[dustdevil]

I just that this has been added to Netflix's "Instant Watch", although they don't have the dvd, yet.

[CrossingRebecca]

I almost didn't watch this movie, though I watch EVERYTHING that comes out on Netflix Instant in Hindi (and sometimes regret it).  But the synopsis didn't particularly appeal to me, and what's with someone who doesn't even speak the language making a movie in Hindi?  And the picture of the movie looked totally unappealing to me.

I'm so glad that I watched it despite my misgivings.  Nana Patekar's performance as an imperfect, limited, but very caring mentor was wonderful.  The movie is slow, but gentle.

I loved

Spoiler (hover to show)

the moment when the boys realized that their pocket money was gone because plastic bags had been made illegal.

I loved the ending.

A slice of life movie that doesn't grind you into the dust with despair.

My only real complaint is that it's been hard to find anyone willing to share it with.