Fish Tank (2009)
The subject of Fish Tank, made in 2009 by director Andrea Arnold, is 15-year-old Mia, who loves to dance, picks fights with the neighborhood girls, and lives with her neglectful mother and younger sister. Compassionate and willful, Mia seems to have no direction or purpose, breaking into abandoned apartments to practice her dance moves and impulsively taking swigs from her mother’s alcohol. In the midst of this chaos, however, she finds herself in an increasingly personal relationship with her mother’s Irish boyfriend. While he seems to take genuine interest in her well-being, she soon finds out that he might not be so honest.
Katie Jarvis is absolutely captivating as the heroine without saying almost anything. Jarvis’s strength is in her silences, her facial expressions, body language (especially since her thick lower-class accent makes her dialogue nearly incomprehensible). The camera movements are subjective to her point-of-view, so we get the full-range of her life at home, on the streets, alone, etc. The realism of it is so striking that it feels like the audience is a ghost, spying on her life unnoticed. There are so many seemingly pointless scenes of Mia alone that the film doesn’t have any discernible purpose for the first twenty minutes—but that doesn’t mean we aren’t interested.
I have to admit that I was intrigued by Michael Fassbender’s performance as well, and not just because I find him very attractive. He makes his character likeable, but vulnerable, and keeps a brew of personal issues simmering beneath the surface. He’s not the standard movie pedophile who’s one sleazy mustache away from being on To Catch a Predator, because he’s the only one who shows Mia any kindness. In fact, you actually start to root for their relationship after a while because he’s so seemingly understanding, which makes me wonder if there was a strategy in that. Perhaps the director was trying to make a statement about how young girls like Mia might go down the wrong path—they’ve been so unwanted all their lives that the minute someone is nice to them (namely much older men), they latch onto them.
The settings contribute to the realism in their own way because they’re shot in real rundown apartments, weed-infested concrete lots, grubby clubs, and the suburbs. Instead of the gorgeous countryside or the London skyline that we’re used to seeing in British movies, we get to see the poverty-stricken areas that aren’t so different from our own. I loved that there was no music soundtrack, besides what was played within the story, because it lets you feel whatever you want to feel, and the inclusion of so much silence lends a creepy sort of attitude to the film. The impact of it sneaks up on you, yet also confronts you.
Most of all though is that what makes Fish Tank so distinctive is that the characters aren’t caricatures of the lower-class, and this isn’t a politically-motivated story. The initial reaction I had after watching it (besides “Fassy you slut!”) is that this is mostly about a bunch of people trying to scrape by, and even more, about a girl trying to navigate her way through life. There isn’t a conclusive ending, no revelation about the moral of the story—just a lingering glimpse of Mia’s life.
Although I can’t say I would want every movie to be like this (since that would be incredibly boring), Arnold’s style of filmmaking here is a welcome change of pace. And even if you aren’t interested in stylistic choices, seeing Fassbender is reason enough to watch it.
