Surrealism
Swimming Pool
My favourite movie of 2010 has to be Ethan and Joel Coen’s A Serious Man. It’s a fascinating parable of the Book of Job set in a small American town in the 1960’s. Nearly all of the cast are of the Jewish Faith. In one part of the movie, our hero the luckless Larry is forced by his estranged wife and her insensitive pompous boyfriend to move into a local motel, The Jolly Roger. “This motel should be more than adequate for your needs and it even has a pool” adds Larry’s rival the ill fated Sye. When the film moves to the motel, the Jolly Roger pool in fact has no water in it, not that Larry was in the mood to go swimming with his world falling apart day by day.
At Passover this year we travelled through a delightful Kibbutz Deganya Bet on the southern shores of the Kinneret, which had a glorious swimming pool, albeit with no water in it, I visualised the link with my favourite move, which was quite fanciful, but amused me. I could not miss the opportunity, and promptly stopped my car much to the chagrin of Ruchama and the kids, and took a series of photographs which I title “The Pool With No Water.” Whilst completing my essay, an elderly Kibbutznik passed by and wondered what an English tourist wearing a Stetson hat and Bermuda shorts was doing walking along the “deep end” of the pool with no water. It became clear to me this gentlemen had not yet seen the Coen’s masterpiece. I hope you enjoy my work.
