Just as a warning, this is not so much of a review than it is an essay about the film, thus there are pretty much all the spoilers.
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When I first heard that a woman named Andrea Arnold had made something titled Fish Tank (2009) I was just under the assumption that it was a new type of sandwich or baguette filled with Salmon, Tuna, lettuce and mayo.
Turns out however, it’s a film. A film about a young girl named Mia who is caught up in a lower class life with the intention of following her dreams of becoming a dancer.
You may wonder, with a synopsis like that why the film is named Fish Tank. There is a distinct lack of actual fish tanks in the film, which may confuse the target audience of these type of grimy, urban lifestyle films, yet like Tyrannosaur (2011), the title, where misleading, is also totally relevant. Tyrannosaur is a film about domestic violence on many different levels from rape to pissing on faces to calling your fat wife a tyrannosaur, the title symbolises domestic violence on its lowest level in the subtext of the film, name calling, safe to say people who expected Peter Mullan to wrestle a stegosaurus were most certainly disappointed.
When thinking of a fish tank you think of a tiny bowl in which inanimate creatures live their life, and eventually die. The title is really a metaphor for the estate and even more so, the life that Mia is trapped in, forced to live in (like her mother) and will eventually die in. This is also symbolised nearer the beginning of the film where there is a horse trapped in a gypsy site that she tries to let loose, but fails, this is clearly a metaphor for Mia’s situation. The film is not without fish, however. In one scene we see Mia and her mother’s boyfriend Connor (played by none other than Michael Fassbender’s penis, I mean, Michael Fassbender) catching fish from a river. Connor manages to capture one and take it out of the river, once it’s out Connor explains that it’s kinder to kill it rather than putting it back in the water. The fish cannot survive outside it’s intended surroundings, is Mia the fish, could she survive is she attempted to leave her intended surroundings? Is there any point in following her dreams and try to get a successful life outside the one she knows?
Speaking of following dreams, the film that I personally feel most closely resembles this one is another film about following dreams. ‘Of Mice and Men (1992)’ is a film based on the novel by John Steinbeck, and is about two men pursuing the American dream in the height of the American depression, back then the dream was owning some land, having a business and just being able to live out of poverty and in peace. In Fish Tank the film is set in a run down and depressed area where most people dream about money and success, the estate looks extremely poor, from grey colour schemes, cheap clothing and old cars, which are all added to create the mood of a rundown area, my favourite detail has to be Mia’s CD Walkman, which is a technology made clearly obsolete by mp3 players, is it a hand-me-down? She uses the CD player to practice all of her dances and manages to finally get an audition for a talent scout. To practice this dance she picks the song she is going to dance to, which happens to be “California Dreaming”, California being where Of Mice and Men was set and dreaming being a very key word of both films.
The dancing scenes in this film seem to be the only moments of escapism for the character. For the rest of the film she constantly has to get to grips with the life she has. Escapism is another key word of this film as it’s really about Mia’s attempt to pass all of the fears of leaving the life she knows and leave, which is incredibly difficult when she is constantly bombarded with The Truman Show (1998) style fears of leaving, such as with the fish and with entering a breakers yard full of crashed cars (the only form of vehicle that could truly take her out of her life), some of which still have the remains of the crashers, I believe this was all added to create a sort of Pavlovian fear in the character so she is too scared to leave her life.
The largest subplot of this film is about the relationship between Mia and Connor, who is her mother’s latest boyfriend in what you can only presume is a long line of them. Mia has an on/off relationship with Connor, mainly being horrible to him when her mother is around and nice when she isn’t, showing Mia’s Oedipal complex toward her mother and Connor. She wants him but is restricted by age and lack of experience. Luckily for her Connor has dropped right out of the film Shame (2012) and will pretty much plow anything that moves. Mia, Mia’s mum, his wife, o yes, Connor has a wife. Once Mia figures this out and getting some insane revenge by pissing on Connor’s living room floor and kidnapping his child, the life she has lived in has turned her into some sort of animal, a pet to her surroundings.
When Mia completely loses it and throws Connor’s daughter into the sea, she final understands the error of her ways, becoming more than what her surroundings expect of her. Giving her the final drive to go for her dreams. She finally auditions for her dancing role, which turns out to be for a strip club. She leaves as the audition starts, leaving her California Dreaming CD behind, she knows that the British dream can’t be found where she lives, she has to escape.
The film ends with her driving off with a gypsy friend she made over the course of the film who is also looking for a means of escape, as if the film was some sort of precursor to a road movie. However with the characters personalities, lack of education and broken lives, the road movie would be a lot less Away We Go(2009) and a lot more Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The films ends with the song, Life’s a Bitch and then you Die, I feel that’s rather fitting.
Turns out however, it’s a film. A film about a young girl named Mia who is caught up in a lower class life with the intention of following her dreams of becoming a dancer.
You may wonder, with a synopsis like that why the film is named Fish Tank. There is a distinct lack of actual fish tanks in the film, which may confuse the target audience of these type of grimy, urban lifestyle films, yet like Tyrannosaur (2011), the title, where misleading, is also totally relevant. Tyrannosaur is a film about domestic violence on many different levels from rape to pissing on faces to calling your fat wife a tyrannosaur, the title symbolises domestic violence on its lowest level in the subtext of the film, name calling, safe to say people who expected Peter Mullan to wrestle a stegosaurus were most certainly disappointed.
When thinking of a fish tank you think of a tiny bowl in which inanimate creatures live their life, and eventually die. The title is really a metaphor for the estate and even more so, the life that Mia is trapped in, forced to live in (like her mother) and will eventually die in. This is also symbolised nearer the beginning of the film where there is a horse trapped in a gypsy site that she tries to let loose, but fails, this is clearly a metaphor for Mia’s situation. The film is not without fish, however. In one scene we see Mia and her mother’s boyfriend Connor (played by none other than Michael Fassbender’s penis, I mean, Michael Fassbender) catching fish from a river. Connor manages to capture one and take it out of the river, once it’s out Connor explains that it’s kinder to kill it rather than putting it back in the water. The fish cannot survive outside it’s intended surroundings, is Mia the fish, could she survive is she attempted to leave her intended surroundings? Is there any point in following her dreams and try to get a successful life outside the one she knows?
Speaking of following dreams, the film that I personally feel most closely resembles this one is another film about following dreams. ‘Of Mice and Men (1992)’ is a film based on the novel by John Steinbeck, and is about two men pursuing the American dream in the height of the American depression, back then the dream was owning some land, having a business and just being able to live out of poverty and in peace. In Fish Tank the film is set in a run down and depressed area where most people dream about money and success, the estate looks extremely poor, from grey colour schemes, cheap clothing and old cars, which are all added to create the mood of a rundown area, my favourite detail has to be Mia’s CD Walkman, which is a technology made clearly obsolete by mp3 players, is it a hand-me-down? She uses the CD player to practice all of her dances and manages to finally get an audition for a talent scout. To practice this dance she picks the song she is going to dance to, which happens to be “California Dreaming”, California being where Of Mice and Men was set and dreaming being a very key word of both films.
The dancing scenes in this film seem to be the only moments of escapism for the character. For the rest of the film she constantly has to get to grips with the life she has. Escapism is another key word of this film as it’s really about Mia’s attempt to pass all of the fears of leaving the life she knows and leave, which is incredibly difficult when she is constantly bombarded with The Truman Show (1998) style fears of leaving, such as with the fish and with entering a breakers yard full of crashed cars (the only form of vehicle that could truly take her out of her life), some of which still have the remains of the crashers, I believe this was all added to create a sort of Pavlovian fear in the character so she is too scared to leave her life.
The largest subplot of this film is about the relationship between Mia and Connor, who is her mother’s latest boyfriend in what you can only presume is a long line of them. Mia has an on/off relationship with Connor, mainly being horrible to him when her mother is around and nice when she isn’t, showing Mia’s Oedipal complex toward her mother and Connor. She wants him but is restricted by age and lack of experience. Luckily for her Connor has dropped right out of the film Shame (2012) and will pretty much plow anything that moves. Mia, Mia’s mum, his wife, o yes, Connor has a wife. Once Mia figures this out and getting some insane revenge by pissing on Connor’s living room floor and kidnapping his child, the life she has lived in has turned her into some sort of animal, a pet to her surroundings.
When Mia completely loses it and throws Connor’s daughter into the sea, she final understands the error of her ways, becoming more than what her surroundings expect of her. Giving her the final drive to go for her dreams. She finally auditions for her dancing role, which turns out to be for a strip club. She leaves as the audition starts, leaving her California Dreaming CD behind, she knows that the British dream can’t be found where she lives, she has to escape.
The film ends with her driving off with a gypsy friend she made over the course of the film who is also looking for a means of escape, as if the film was some sort of precursor to a road movie. However with the characters personalities, lack of education and broken lives, the road movie would be a lot less Away We Go(2009) and a lot more Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The films ends with the song, Life’s a Bitch and then you Die, I feel that’s rather fitting.
