Fish Tank

Fish Tank

123 Minutes

Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank is a refreshing piece of realist filmmaking, distinct in its perspective and approach. Beautifully shot on HD, and in a 1.33:1 ratio, which is kind of fun (and underlines the film’s motif of environmental oppression), you could make the argument that Fish Tank is as much a film about the tracking shot as it is about escape and the realization of one’s potential. The sense of velocity is established right from the start, as 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) rampages around her housing projects, the precise and muscular camera work combining with her speed and authority over her environment to create an immediate sense of desperate energy. From the first, you notice her stride, not so much an over-compensatory tough-guy strut as it is relentless and direct; Mia’s on fire. Witness her throw some rocks at a friend’s apartment window before hysterically berating his father, headbutt a mouthy girl’s nose to pieces in a parking lot and break into an abandoned apartment to dance for hours while drinking a 40 she got some older kid to buy for her; the camera chases after her the whole time as she takes us on a restless, introductory tour of her world. In the abstract, and I guess within the context of my sensationalist summary, this may sound like some bullshit “gritty kids getting up to bad vibes” thing, but it’s not, because the film is focused on the exact opposite of exploitation. We admire Mia; she’s a million times faster than anyone else around her – sharper, stronger, hungrier. Her internal conflicts are not forged from pettiness and her anger is a mixture of generalized (and identifiable) adolescent rage and circumstantial frustrations.

One of the defining characteristics of the complex is the density of sound – curses ricochet off the walls from every direction, a screaming match is always audible in the distance, blending with songs blasting and kids yelling in the street. Fish Tank is a film of contrasts – we partially define our hero by what she is not; most specifically, with her relationship to being a girl and being an active participant in popular culture. She stands in direct opposition to her party-crazy mother (Kierston Wareing) and MTV-addicted younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths). When she has her run-in with the girls in the parking lot, this difference is further emphasized by the contrast between Mia’s standard grey tracksuit and the girls’ short skirts and belly shirts, not to mention the ease with which she uses violence against them. Even more aptly, they are practicing an awkward, aspirational sexy dance routine to Cassie’s “Me & U,” Mia breaks into an empty apartment to dance to Eric B. & Rakim.

What this movie really gets right is the cultural currency that music takes on in youth, the way it dictates the delineations between kids, and the subtle distinctions that can be drawn from them. Later in the film, Mia stands before the TV in her kitchen, watching a Ja Rule/Ashanti opus from the late ’90s. It’s clearly not her thing, and she tries to imitate the girls on screen for a while, copping a lot of the same moves she’s seen her mother pull at her regular drunken house parties; she comes off as stiff and awkward. Her mother’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender) is atypically smart and nice for someone she’d date, and listens to “weird shit” like “California Dreamin’” and he doesn’t dumb down to her. Mia develops a crush on him and he doesn’t discourage her. The development of this relationship accomplishes a lot of what I think An Education wanted to, but aside from the similar shell surrounding both situations, Fish Tank allows Connor to be a disappointment rather than a wistful memory. The great accomplishment at the end is that she can let her guard down and dance with her mother for a while before she takes off, not because she’s changed to be more like her, but because she’s established and secured the difference between them clearly enough that she can be comfortable dancing in her own mode. Instead of defining herself in opposition to the things she’s not, she’s grown to stand for what she is.

by Andrei Alupului