Watching this movie felt like a painful, yet necessary experience. This is coming from someone who nearly loved the movie. But it's true, no matter what you think about it, Fish Tank is not easy to watch, at times. I'm not saying it's particularly gritty, but it just rings too close to home to ignore. We deal with this image every day, we see these kids, wasting their lives and their talents between grey walls, staring into space emptily, trying to get away from some shitty family and we see that shitty family, living in a piling mess of mediocrity. And after we see this, we try to run away quickly, cover our eyes and pick a comforting view again.
Fish Tank is a love or hate movie, I've come to realize. I loved it, but my roommate for example, hated it. She hated the fact that no character was redeemable in any way and that the plot went nowhere. But most of all, she hated the feeling the movie gave her, of total and complete alienation.
Funny thing, that's what I loved about the movie. The atmosphere, as bleak and desolate as it was, made me appreciate a great deal of small things this movie subtly hints at, such as sisterhood, the beauty of nature, car rides, horses and empty apartments. It sounds strange, but the movie actually painted a bright image, a very bright image of pain.
It's not dark and hopeless, it's just staggering in its hope, which makes it all the more painful. All throughout this movie, each character seems to strive towards something. It can be meaningless and stupid to us, but to them, it's everything. It doesn't matter why they strive. The fact that their attempts all crumble into a jaded sense of hopelessness is of greater impact. Because it doesn't start out with hopelessness and it doesn't end with hopelessness. It's the crushing feeling in between that takes you to a new emotional level. It's the middle of the movie that shows you what real despair can feel like. And to me it felt like a muffled shout. As if Mia was trying to scream, but someone had shoved silence in her mouth. From the outside, this movie can be about Mia's journey towards a new life, not better, but still different. But on the inside, it can be about the end of Mia's journey into herself.
I think it's very important to understand that Mia never wanted a lover in Connor. Sure, she thought about him that way and she had an obvious crush on him, but she's fifteen, she's allowed to confuse feelings and be attracted to handsome, older men. But Mia really started liking Connor when he showed kindness and attention. She never wanted to be another girlfriend, she wanted to be someone important in his life, because she wasn't important to anyone in general. She thought she'd found solace in him and that he would take her away from everything. It's the childish illusion of escape through someone else. It's the disappointment when she discovers he's run away that makes this character so solid for me. Mia is not angry he ran off after sex. And even when she finds out he'd lied all that time and he had another life with his wife and child, she doesn't act like the other woman, betrayed by a lover. She just feels let down. She allowed herself to hope and she got nothing in return. Disappointing children is one of the worst things adults can do. And Connor does just that, making Mia feel like a small child again.
I see a striking parallelism between her and his young daughter. She takes Connor's daughter in a fit of rage, but she discovers they're both just as fragile. And Mia hates being fragile. She quietly hates the fact that Connor saw her as an attractive girl first and only later as a kid. But I suspect she also hates herself for having caused this shift in the first place, for having led Connor, through her somewhat innocent flirtations, to see her first in a sexual manner and second, as a friend. But any guilt she might feel she directs at him, for putting her in an impossible position. It's at this point that I understood Connor's failure to be a father figure had become her failure to be a daughter. She feels so disconnected to her mother that all she can do as she leaves her home is to share a last dance with her. She's become a woman in that horrible sense of the word, forcing her innocence and inexperience to become weapons and playing on the fact that her status will always depend on her sexuality (and this is cleverly hinted at in the audition scene).
Despite all of this, Mia is still a strong character. She refuses to get naked, refuses to be beaten down, refuses to give up dancing, refuses to let herself get drowned in her mother's world. It's always annoying when teenagers pick 'No' as their favourite word. But in this case, her blatant rejection of everyone and everything is not a bratty act of self-sufficiency, it's a desperate cry for acceptance, for a 'Yes'. In the end, what's sad is that she is proved right, that rejection would have saved her some unnecessary pain. But the last scene manages to turn this grim conclusion into a double-edged sword. Rejection would have saved her the trouble, but acceptance is still another form of rejection. By accepting to move on, she rejects her old life, she rejects her mother and she rejects becoming another 'problem kid' in a correctional facility (because that's what would have happened, had she gone further with her kidnapping). So, if we take a closer look, are rejection and acceptance much different? No, they both require each other for either one to be effective.
Fish Tank is a love or hate movie, I've come to realize. I loved it, but my roommate for example, hated it. She hated the fact that no character was redeemable in any way and that the plot went nowhere. But most of all, she hated the feeling the movie gave her, of total and complete alienation.
Funny thing, that's what I loved about the movie. The atmosphere, as bleak and desolate as it was, made me appreciate a great deal of small things this movie subtly hints at, such as sisterhood, the beauty of nature, car rides, horses and empty apartments. It sounds strange, but the movie actually painted a bright image, a very bright image of pain.
It's not dark and hopeless, it's just staggering in its hope, which makes it all the more painful. All throughout this movie, each character seems to strive towards something. It can be meaningless and stupid to us, but to them, it's everything. It doesn't matter why they strive. The fact that their attempts all crumble into a jaded sense of hopelessness is of greater impact. Because it doesn't start out with hopelessness and it doesn't end with hopelessness. It's the crushing feeling in between that takes you to a new emotional level. It's the middle of the movie that shows you what real despair can feel like. And to me it felt like a muffled shout. As if Mia was trying to scream, but someone had shoved silence in her mouth. From the outside, this movie can be about Mia's journey towards a new life, not better, but still different. But on the inside, it can be about the end of Mia's journey into herself.
I think it's very important to understand that Mia never wanted a lover in Connor. Sure, she thought about him that way and she had an obvious crush on him, but she's fifteen, she's allowed to confuse feelings and be attracted to handsome, older men. But Mia really started liking Connor when he showed kindness and attention. She never wanted to be another girlfriend, she wanted to be someone important in his life, because she wasn't important to anyone in general. She thought she'd found solace in him and that he would take her away from everything. It's the childish illusion of escape through someone else. It's the disappointment when she discovers he's run away that makes this character so solid for me. Mia is not angry he ran off after sex. And even when she finds out he'd lied all that time and he had another life with his wife and child, she doesn't act like the other woman, betrayed by a lover. She just feels let down. She allowed herself to hope and she got nothing in return. Disappointing children is one of the worst things adults can do. And Connor does just that, making Mia feel like a small child again.
I see a striking parallelism between her and his young daughter. She takes Connor's daughter in a fit of rage, but she discovers they're both just as fragile. And Mia hates being fragile. She quietly hates the fact that Connor saw her as an attractive girl first and only later as a kid. But I suspect she also hates herself for having caused this shift in the first place, for having led Connor, through her somewhat innocent flirtations, to see her first in a sexual manner and second, as a friend. But any guilt she might feel she directs at him, for putting her in an impossible position. It's at this point that I understood Connor's failure to be a father figure had become her failure to be a daughter. She feels so disconnected to her mother that all she can do as she leaves her home is to share a last dance with her. She's become a woman in that horrible sense of the word, forcing her innocence and inexperience to become weapons and playing on the fact that her status will always depend on her sexuality (and this is cleverly hinted at in the audition scene).
Despite all of this, Mia is still a strong character. She refuses to get naked, refuses to be beaten down, refuses to give up dancing, refuses to let herself get drowned in her mother's world. It's always annoying when teenagers pick 'No' as their favourite word. But in this case, her blatant rejection of everyone and everything is not a bratty act of self-sufficiency, it's a desperate cry for acceptance, for a 'Yes'. In the end, what's sad is that she is proved right, that rejection would have saved her some unnecessary pain. But the last scene manages to turn this grim conclusion into a double-edged sword. Rejection would have saved her the trouble, but acceptance is still another form of rejection. By accepting to move on, she rejects her old life, she rejects her mother and she rejects becoming another 'problem kid' in a correctional facility (because that's what would have happened, had she gone further with her kidnapping). So, if we take a closer look, are rejection and acceptance much different? No, they both require each other for either one to be effective.