Fish Tank

Fish Tank (2009)

Director: Andrea Arnold

Cast: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kiersten Wareing

Fish Tank is a film about entrapment and the seeds of failure, and every scene up until the end is calculated to leave the viewer feeling as enslaved by long embedded societal structures as our heroine, Mia. Fifteen year- old Mia (played by an excellent Katie Jarvis) resides in the East London projects with her neglectful, verbally abusive mother, Joanne (Kiersten Wareing), who largely acts like a teenager herself and renders no doubt that she birthed Mia at too young an age, and her bourgeoning delinquent little sister, Tyler. When we meet her, she has already headed down the exponential path of self-destruction and future dereliction, scoring cheap malt cider on the side and instigating physical fights with neighborhood girls. Once we see the interior of her low-income tenement, the helplessness of her destitute situation becomes astoundingly clear; tiny, cheap televisions stand as center pieces in every room, playing realty shows featuring people with ostentatiously shallow lives. Mia, her mother, and sister can only confront one another with harsh shouts and name-calling (namely “cunt” and “bitch”), and fully embody a non-family that has for years been devoid of love and demonstrations of love. It is no wonder that throughout the film Mia is only able to confront people with suspicion and violence.

Mia’s solace comes in the form of a safe space, fittingly an abandoned flat overlooking industrial London. It is here she practices self-choreographed R&B dance routines, and her seemingly intrinsic passion for dance is amplified as the movie progresses, most stunningly in a scene which takes place in an internet café, when Mia watches youtube videos of talented break dances, the camera steadying on her unknowingly wide-eyed, smiling face.

This scene is one of many that makes her character relatable to all of us, despite her cultural- economic circumstances. Anyone who has a passion for art, whichever medium it may be, will understand the catatonic state of witnessing exemplary talent you admire, are envious of, and strive to reach. One critic, Lauren Wissot, focused her review on the fact that Mia is on the cusp of some proto-feminist sexual awakening. But to approach Fish Tank in these post-modern terms detracts from the essential humanism and literary universality of her character and circumstances.

Enter Mia’s foil, the bewilderingly charismatic and attractive Connor (Michael Fassbender). As her promiscuous mother’s lover, Connor is attractive to Mia not only because of his physique and charm, but also because he treats her as if he’s the doting father she never had. When Mia passes out drunk after swiping and chugging a bottle of vodka at her mother’s house party, Connor carries her to her room like a small child, and delicately removes her sneakers and pants, tucking her into bed. Even more attentively, Connor insistently encourages Mia to pursue dancing, because she’s “really good”. Counter wise, her mother scoffs and mocks when she sees Mia dancing outside Connor’s car after the family takes a trip outside the city, and Mia, of course, takes her rage out on the culprit of her vulnerability, Connor, screaming, “You’re nothing to me!”

Of course Connor is everything to Mia, and remains, in the end, a figure who transforms her life for the better by not transforming her life. It is this irony that makes Fish Tank an exemplary narrative, despite its crucial mistake of (SPOILERS) turning the central foil into a skeezy, lecherous child molester. After reflecting on the film a day later, it is remarkable to me how little would have changed in the film’s brilliant story arch had Mia and Connor not fucked on the sofa. He would still have a wife and young daughter at a more affluent home in the suburbs, and still have remained the same lying, false male figure to Mia, shattering her hopes of love and trust. After having encouraged her throughout the entire film to audition to dance for a night club, which cleverly turns out to be a strip club (another entertaining twist in this story), Connor neglects and scorns Mia in the end, whom had perfected her routine to his favorite song, “California Dreaming”. But this does not stop her from still going to the audition and playing his song and trying anyway. In the end she walks off the stage mid-song, triumphantly in my eyes. Forever walking away from Connor’s song and, therefore, her memories of him, Mia realizes that only she can save herself from future ruin... but only by having once had faith that a stranger could do it for her.

If Mia’s final dance with her family is any indication, she realizes she is better off without all these losers, and sacrifices her up-until-then hidden dancing talent to prove just that, ultimately exiting the frame no longer trapped.

A-