Review of Fish Tank (2009) by Parker M — 22 Jun 2011

3.5 Stars out of 4.

Fish Tank begins angry and petrified. We faithfully follow Mia (first-timer Katie Jarvis) through the desolate streets of Britain where she stumbles along the way, her pulse raging. She discovers a tethered horse and wants it as hers. She is accosted by the owners of the horse - two trailer park boys - and they steal her belongings. She flees but persists to have that horse. All girls want a pony. But this would do just fine.

So starts Fish Tank, a British film that is honest, smart, and full of notes to play. It's one of those Social Realism films but not about depicting a lifestyle but holding it in the background and making it a template for the character's distress. There is some dialogue but none of it is appropriate to write. The movie adamantly pursues Mia, a 15 year-old girl so stubborn with anger that it feeds her personality. She lives with her mother and younger sister who share their "affection" by calling each other c-words and other words that should be spat in the toilet.

Mia has a passive dream. She is a dancer and spends a good time of her day, imitating rap dancers and twisting her body with a sensual timidness. Soon enough, her mother starts dating Connor (Michael Fassbender), a charming Irishman who works at a warehouse. He brings in a balance to this unstable family's life. He takes them to the river, offers piggy backs, listens to upbeat music (Mia admires the "California Dreamin'" cover by Bobby Womack) and nurses their cuts and bruises. Fish Tank then starts to ascend to a happier, more optimistic tone as we envelop every inner thought of Mia's.

The first hour seems heartfelt but bland. Director Andrea Arnold, at first, appears to be making a simple storyline about wishful thinking in squalid places. Arnold's routine, I started to think, was studying values that were not easy to quibble with. Fish Tank appears to embody ordinary themes that I agree with but just am not challenged by.

But then the film becomes another beast. It's not arbitrary because Arnold develops a tension and makes us ask questions about who Connor is. The film reveals answers, that are shocking but vague. This is because we associate only with Mia, her outsiderness and naivety. Things happen that cannot be explained or justified, we are left simply to assume. It creates a frustration, not to us but one embedded in Mia. We are as vulnerable as Mia, and thus we feel victimized too.

Arnold directs accordingly, filming many of the scenes over the shoulder of Mia. The camera moves erratically as Mia searches for companionship in every direction. But - I think - the credit has to go to actors Jarvis and Fassbender. They don't just develop a bond but one that teeters on the edge of benign and eerie. The greatest challenge is that all of these characters are likeable and difficult to deal with. We don't understand them and it is arduous enough to identify with Mia. She does not know how to feel. But Connor tells her she has a sweet smile.

Fish Tank is a film so pure no film could catch it. A typical first half amounts to a second half so extraordinary, morose, and cold it makes us rethink why so many loved Precious Based On the Novel Push By Sapphire. Unlike that work (of which I did not like), Fish Tank is without artifice and doesn't use our sympathy as a ploy but a natural ingredient. Arnold does not drape sympathy over the characters but forces her audience to develop a semblance of detachment and rigidity. Mia thinks she is invulnerable and one of the points of Fish Tank is to reveal the malleability of the young, and the audience.

Arnold transcends the material by not just "depicting" for realism's sake, but forming a paradox. Mia's journey through Fish Tank is circular. What begins as a blessing of happiness disarms as a retreat to pathos. Fish Tank starts as a sullen film and ends with on a similar nerve of the morose. Arnold does not force feed the plot with any climax of tragedy. No one dies in Fish Tank but - for some - that may have been the best escape.

I must also mention that actress Katie Jarvis was discovered on the street by one of Arnold's casting assistants. Jarvis was arguing with her boyfriend. Here she has a similar attitude, one so raw and pure that it does not have that "acting" edge to it. Jarvis's coldness denies sympathy yet we still understand her, because she is flawed and not nimble. Jarvis, in Fish Tank, seems to have insulated that anger from that argument. It exists all the way through, as a defence mechanism and a form of self-pity.

Fish Tank is about dreams yes, but it is grounded in a bleak reality that we cannot comprehend. Arnold does not set us free but makes us, like Mia, ponder worrisomely about the future. The consequences in the film cannot be rationalized but just are. It's as if we are, quite aptly, staring through a fish tank watching these characters. Everything is distorted in a boxed out world where the only escape is a meandering trip down the toilet.