A Different Coming-of-Age Story
In 2006, the first full-length film made by Andrea Arnold entitled Red Road surprised everyone. Like the over-viewing and retaliation motivated by a broken relationship, it was unexpected and dealt with heavy topics. She received an award for her film. However, she previously won an Oscar for her short film Wasp in 2003. Red Road and her third film, Fish Tank, have the same theme. The subjects of all three are young women stranded in a housing complex and in strange but uncomfortable situations, especially when it comes to sex. Despite the seemingly melancholic tone, the films are anything but. The main character in Arnold’s work is a complete firecracker who will never consider himself a victim. Especially Mia, the brave young protagonist in the film. She is like no other.
Therefore, it is easy to classify Fish Tank as a “typical British film.” The film features people less fortunate than most of us watching it. International audiences may be most reminded of Ken Loach’s 1969 film, Kes, or earlier films in which he delves deeply into the plight of poor communities. However, British TV has also had a lot of success with the formula of the “gritty drama about hard lives.” It was the beginning of several directors, including Loach, starting their careers in the industry. They were once referred to as Plays. Something like Loach’s early Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, or even Alan Clarke’s Scum. When it comes to writing, acting, and filming such storylines in a way that seems genuine and grounded, the series sets the standard. Even today, social realism literature is strongly influenced by the ideal.
In other words, there are two types of coming-of-age stories: stories of everything being bad and stories of everything magically getting better. However, Arnold does her best; she captures the severity of the situation while maintaining a sense of realism in her character.
Take Mia, the main character in Fish Tank. She wants to be a dancer, but to be honest (at least in her own eyes), she is not talented. By the end of the film, she may have moved to a better place, returned to the projects, continued to live a chaotic welfare life like her mother, or, worse, started using drugs. Arnold is more interested in illustrating what life is really like for a fifteen-year-old girl today than she is in speculating about what will happen next (which is very unusual in films since they’re usually all about boys). In addition, because many people in England now lived in poorer areas of the city, she wanted to depict the area in her paintings.
My Beautiful Laundrette and Dirty Pretty Things director Stephen Frears (who also has a deep understanding of British culture) is a big fan of Fish Tank. He claims how (similar to what the film Kes accomplished for his generation) the film felt as if it was revealing to us what we needed to see. The Full Monty and Billy Elliot are two examples of films that try to make things look normal even in a chaotic atmosphere. They give the impression of how all it takes to become rich and famous is to appear on a TV talent show. That’s not what the film means; it doesn’t sugarcoat anything. However, it also doesn’t just focus on how bad things are.
Especially for a British realism film, Arnold has a new and very thorough perspective on the world. Despite the fact how loud and profane the young people in Fish Tank may be, it makes sense why she understands them so well. They are presented in the film as tough but somewhat fearful; they come together for comfort but are unsure of themselves when alone.
All of it likely comes from Arnold’s personal history. She spent several years working on youth-oriented television programs. For example, she once appeared in a Saturday morning soap opera as a roller skater. But more important is that she grew up in a working-class household as one of four children in a government-built house in a less-than-ideal neighborhood outside London. It is comparable to the location Fish Tank. Even though the film doesn’t completely tell the story of her life, it’s clear how she gets to know the remote and lonely environment surrounding London and the prejudice faced by people with certain accents.
The Housing Projects as Setting
The communities have their past. They were built to protect those forced to leave densely populated and impoverished areas of London after World War II. One notable example is the Mardyke Estate, where several Fish Tank scenes were filmed. Built-in the 1960s as housing for industrial workers, the building was intended to provide a new start for those originally from London. However, the results were really bad. Individuals growing up in close-knit communities feel alone and suddenly lost. The buildings themselves had an eerie and impersonal feel, and criminals began to arrive, adding drugs and chaos to the already existing problems of individuals abusing alcohol and stealing things. It recalls the eerie dystopian setting of A Clockwork Orange. For inspiration, the filmmakers only needed to glance at similar areas of London.
So, all material related to the environment is the main narrative setting; it centers on a young girl torn between childhood and adulthood. In contrast to some other British social realism films blaming society for making people unhappy, the director cares about Mia. She is alone when we first meet her in a remote apartment. It’s her dance floor, her paradise. From her point of view, she observes the entire plantation, like a doctor in a classic film using a sophisticated spy camera to spy on his entire community. However, we only see Mia in action; we are not allowed to enter her mind. She drinks when she can get older acquaintances to give her cider, and she dances. She once believed that dancing might be her way out of there. However, when she finds out how the “audition” is only for dancers to appear sexy for drunk men, her first attempt to do so goes wrong.
When Mia tries to retrieve a horse (which is tied up sadly in a nearby empty lot), she gets another crazy thought like a secret wish. At that time in England, a random breed of horse usually indicated the presence of gypsies; nomadic people are sometimes referred to as “tinkers.” Everyone always suspects them of being involved in shady activities and the locals and police are always investigating them.
Anyway, Mia has a fun moment when she sees the poor creature shackled. She has to let it go! There seemed to be something seductive about the large, muscular beast, almost an overwhelming longing. Even after that, she returned with equipment in an attempt to break the chain, looking beak-like and stealthy. We can see how she wants the strategy, even though it may be very unreasonable. It’s like peeking at another part of herself that she usually covers up well. Additionally, if we like old English films, we might notice a resemblance to the strange white horse from the film Fires Were Started. It’s a film where everything is destroyed by bombs during the war. It’s a strange vibe we get from Mia’s horse problem.
Mia becomes very interested in trying to cure the sad-looking horse; her obsession eventually leads her to Billy, a wanderer living with a group of people. Even though Billy is not a hot commodity, Mia still likes him. Maybe he’s cool with drinking with her behind her back, even though they’re both underage or maybe he’s just a good friend without being weird. Now, Mia’s environment seems dominated by sex. Visibly, they are all trying to outdo each other. In contrast, Mia wore clothes that completely disguised her figure. Tyler (her eight-year-old little sister) is even out there wearing a bikini top and chatting like a sailor. Let’s not talk about where they live. There’s a strange painting of a Florida beach on the wall, and it’s designed like an exploding Pepto-Bismol bottle. We always get the impression that something sexual is going to happen. Joanne (their mother) is strangely jealous of Mia’s childhood; she constantly smokes, drinks, and just dates other people.
Entering Mia’s World Through Cinematography
Now pay attention, Robbie Ryan (the film’s brilliant cinematographer) takes us into Mia’s world. It seems we see everything from her point of view. The tough-looking girl with a chip on her shoulder is looking for trouble or an opportunity to get ahead; she scans every door and window. The problem is, that she has a very different side to herself that’s behind all the bluster. The world can be a scary place, especially for those troubled by issues related to manhood and men. What we feel is darkness around the corners of her eyes, as if she were looking out from a lookout tower.
Here’s Connor, the new guy her mother met through Irish extraordinaire Michael Fassbender, perhaps familiar to us from the film Hunger. However, Connor faces many problems. Between him and Mia, sparks fly; at first, it was all just imagination and glimpses, but it quickly turned real. Arnold handles everything like a casual dance. The two engage in a quiet appearance competition, and then they start acting like kids again. Complicated because of the connectedness and feeling of family that Mia has never felt there. But is it real or just a hoax? Isn’t that the question?
Influences and Comparisons
Although Arnold drew on her own experiences to create Fish Tank, much of the film’s realism also came from her discovery of seventeen-year-old Katie Jarvis, whom he found arguing with her boyfriend at the train station. Then, just as Loach primarily leans into the raw sensibility of young David Bradley as Billy, Arnold guides Jarvis through a demanding lead role. Whether Mia is standing up for herself among her friends, playing with cosmetics in her mother’s bedroom, or recklessly pursuing revenge for Connor’s betrayal in a series set on the banks of the Thames Estuary and both terrifying and engrossing, Jarvis captures Mia’s essence with total believability. Arnold has a good understanding of her character’s life in moments such as when Mia chooses to leave her family and seek a chance to be happy. Arnold does a great job of depicting the soundtrack of Mia and Joanne’s lives, as seen in the emotional, wordless sequence where they start dancing to Nas’ Life’s a Bitch. Connor’s love of California Dreamin’ is another example of that.
Considering Loach’s career is huge compared to his meager filmography, Arnold is probably tired of hearing that by now. Loach is a British filmmaker who has been analyzing the lives of working-class people for almost fifty years. Making a film about the world was almost a foregone conclusion, and suddenly we were the face of the whole “British state” thing. Thus the whole concept has a very long history; in the 1840s, a historian named Carlyle was already classifying it as “strange” and “not good”!
In Mia’s room, observant viewers can spot two Union Jack flags: one on a mug and the other on a CD called An England Story (which happens to have a selection of dance music with a Caribbean flavor). It may raise the question of whether Arnold, like some other directors, was aiming for an overall “ruined England” theme. Like Shane Meadows’ skinhead film This Is England or Antonia Bird’s gritty depiction of the homeless in Safe.
The problem is, Arnold would rather tell Mia’s story (namely, how she struggled to overcome the stigma others placed on her because of her working class background). She was constantly reminded by her mother about the dangers of being placed in one of the “pupil referral units” for children already expelled from regular schools. Mia didn’t hide the fact that there was no guarantee she would succeed, even if Arnold wanted her to.
Ultimately, Fish Tank is about optimism and the refusal to let the system destroy us as encapsulated in the iconic quote from the classic British film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. However, it’s also about seeing a brighter future, which is what Mia does when she and Billy leave.
Bibliography
- Christie, I. (2011). Fish Tank: An England Story. Current | The Criterion Collection.
- Ebert, R. (2010). A teen girl looking for trouble just as it’s looking for her. Roger Ebert.
- Jones, K. M. (2010). Review: Fish Tank. Film Comment Magazine.
- Piket, B. (2019). Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and the resilience of youth. Little White Lies.