by Christine Westwood
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Various swimmers
Intro:
… a visual feast. You can take pleasure in cracking out the popcorn, revelling in Cunningham’s stunning landscapes, and dreaming of maybe taking a plunge one day.
To borrow a tourism slogan ‘Beautiful one day, perfect the next’, the 100 days at the Bondi Icebergs pool as seen through cinematographer Ben Cunningham’s lens for Ian Darling’s documentary are varying degrees of majestic, gorgeous and often, well, perfect.
Even the stormy days are visually stunning, and if the winter cold water may put off your average swimmer, not so for the tough crew that make up the membership at the iconic venue. They are in the water, rain or shine. Darling’s crew joined them for 99 days out of the 100.
“We had to prove our stripes,” he told FilmInk.
It was a strategic, as well as pleasurable choice that gained the regulars’ trust and gave access to their stories. These stories are told in brief interviews around the pool. Ages range across the board, with a strong contingent of 70 and 80 year olds. Strong is the operative word, as they front up day after day to plunge into that water to take part in squad training and the demanding ritual of laps.
Back and forth they go, captured on camera in a magnificent display of tumble turns and power strokes as bodies slice through water that is by turns aqua, silver, red and purple. The pool is the main character in this documentary. We see it with its lanes full of swimmers by day and majestically empty at night, except for the weekly pool cleaners who brush and sweep, clearing out debris that can include stray jellyfish.
The Icebergs is the most iconic of Sydney’s ocean pools – the oldest and largest winter swimming club in Australia. Drone shots show its rectangle of water flanked by open sea, waves thrown over the swimmers on wild weather days, or drawing in and out in calmer swells.
Like many of its members, the pool is a veteran, formed in 1929.
The soundtrack includes 1960s classic hits, reflecting the history when in 1960 it became the only licensed winter swimming club in the world. It took until 1995 for them to let in female members, and it still has a flavour of the old boys, as they talk of morning swims followed by beers. There is a touch of military, certainly athletic, discipline in the regimentation of swimming tallies and their rule that members are required to complete 75 swims over five years. The Club site mentions notable swimmers include Neil Rogers, Robbie Woodhouse, Joel Maybury and Rugby international Sparrow Dowse.
The women and kids are holding their own, as they snap on the bathing caps and flex muscles. There are over 1000 adult swimming members plus some 300 juniors, aged 5-17. One female swimmer talks of recovery from cancer, another that she swam right up to the birth of her child, another swimming 6-7 hours in training for an English Channel challenge.
The high definition shots offer the sculptural aesthetic that Darling intended, while varied pacing from time lapse to speed to stillness highlight the experience of bodies in the water. The director took inspiration from the style of Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad (1964) and Chariots of Fire (1981) that was shot in the same vein.
Darling’s main motive was to celebrate a sense of community that was lost to us during Covid. Swimming being his own main passion, The Pool became an obvious motif for the theme. Like his previous documentaries that have affected social change, especially The Oasis on Sydney’s homeless, he hopes to use The Pool as leverage to bring awareness to pool closures and the importance of swimming communities.
It may not be your idea of fun to take on the rigours of year round swimming, as one swimmer states, “nobody wants to swim in cold water – it’s uncomfortable,” but The Pool is a visual feast. You can take pleasure in cracking out the popcorn, revelling in Cunningham’s stunning landscapes, and dreaming of maybe taking a plunge one day.
