The Pool and Frozen River

The Pool directed by Chris Smith and set in Goa is beautiful and subtle. The setting of the pool and the Goan coast, the town of Panjim and fort and forests make it lush and tropical. The movie centers around the friendship of Venkatesh and Jhangir, two cleaning boys and their interaction with Ayesha and Nana Patekar, the wealthy owners of the pool that Venkatesh so desires to swim in. The movie is done in a neo-realist style blurring the lines between fiction and reality. But the deeper message of the movie was what one thinks one really desires close up does not look so desirable any more.

In the manner of a Satyajit Ray film, “The Pool” avoids melodrama, the better to capture the texture of Venkatesh’s vagabond life. Venkatesh tells several personal stories, the scariest of which recounts his kidnapping by a New Zealand tourist who, intending to take him overseas as a servant, held him captive for three days until he escaped.



At first “The Pool” suggests an inspirational fable in which a selfless older man rescues a youth from the streets. But just when you expect the film to turn into a predictable, rose-colored valentine to opportunity and hope, it goes to a deeper, more ambiguous place. Contemplating poverty from Venkatesh’s perspective, it understands that his pursuit of upward mobility will require a terrifying leap of faith.



Although its later scenes feel rushed and frustratingly ambiguous, “The Pool” recognizes the ways poverty can trap its victims into a kind of eternal childhood and how, psychologically, it can be more comfortable to stay put than to move forward. Although Venkatesh is seven years older than his sidekick, emotionally they are the same age. Seizing opportunity would mean growing up. And growing pains can be excruciating.


Frozen River was much less enjoyable with its cold wintry New York Canada landscape. The movie captured the complicated friendship between Ray and Lila well. The politics of racism and acute poverty was well portrayed between Whites and Native Americans. But the movie could have been more complete by telling us more about the immigrants that were coming, instead of slotting them simply as Chinese or Pakis. The social realism was depressing and unrelenting.

A positive review from the NYT's here.

Venturing deep into the trenches where hard-working Americans struggle to put food on the table, Courtney Hunt’s somber film “Frozen River” evokes a perfect storm of present-day woes: illegal immigration, ethnic tension, depressed real estate, high gas prices and dire poverty.



The film’s setting, in upstate New York at the Canadian border, is a gray wintry landscape of mud and slush dotted with trailers and discount stores. Although it is days before Christmas, there is no joy here, and as the movie goes along, its chill begins to seep into your bones.



The closest thing to a social hub is a bingo parlor on the Mohawk reservation that straddles the frozen St. Lawrence River. Here is where the husband of Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), the hard-bitten mother of two sons, 15-year-old T. J. (Charlie McDermott) and 5-year-old Ricky (James Reilly), gambled away the family’s meager savings before deserting them, leaving no word.