Fish tank

There's been a long drought on this blog so here's a short shower to moisten the dying roots.

Watched one of them arty house films t'other day called 'fish tank'. It was about a surly, lonely teenage girl living in a high rise block of flats in a poor bit of London.


She doesn't have any mates and her mum is trying to push her off to some boarding school for 'special kids'. Her days seem to consist of getting in fights with other girls, calling people the c-word, getting hold of booze and coming up with dance routines to her break-beat tunes in an abandoned flat above her own.

Concrete jungle

Her environment is as urban as it gets really, there's barely a smudge of green in her neighborhood. But she does seem to love animals, in fact the only time we see a tender side to her personality is when she interacts with her dog or an emaciated horse.

So, the horse. On her wanderings she spots the old mare chained up near some caravans. She goes in and tries to set it free by smashing the lock with a brick before being chased off by some bloke with a cricket bat. You think, 'oh that's nice she wants to free the horse, but that's enough now love, you'll stay away from there right?'.

Nope. She goes back after getting half a bottle of cider in her and takes a hammer to break the lock. There's some slow motion and soft focus of the gentle interaction between the girl - Mia - and the horse. Then she almost get's freaking raped when the owners catch her. But she manages to leg it when the nice one of the caravan boys lets the dog off the lead which distracts them all; so she's saved by an animal yeah?

Enter the Bender

At this point you sort of wonder where the movie is going, then Michael Fassbender turns up as her mum's charismatic new boyfriend.

From this point on the movie is more about the dynamic within an all female family being affected by a masculine presence and Mia's sexual awakening. But I ain't interested in aw'dat! I'm on about the nature.

The main scene on which I'm focusing this whole post is when Fassbender takes the lot of them (Mia, her little sister and her mum) out for a drive.

It's a literal and metaphysical breath of fresh air for all of them. The sun is shining and Bobby Womack is playing. He doesn't tell them where they're going but they end up in the countryside. It's just a nice bit of grass next to a river, but Mia looks around her surroundings there with no small measure of wonder. He tells them that in this place 'the fish aren't afraid of people because no one comes here'.

Let them eat berries

A point that really resonated for me is where she says 'I want to pick the berries', while leaning out of the car window towards some brambles. I'm probably reading too much into it, but it seems to me that she's trying to reach out and connect with her surroundings physically, like she did with the horse by holding its head and feeling its breath on her face. She gravitates towards the nature.

I saw the same thing when volunteering on nature reserves, the inner city kids were often more excited and curious about the plants and animals than the countryside kids. They weren't scared or grossed out. There might be other things affecting their behaviour, like having been on a dusty bus for hours sat next to some kid who's chundered everywhere after eating too much Haribo, but I reckon it's because there's an inherent interest in all this stuff. It just gets lost sometimes when people grow up because other shit gets in the way.

Anyway back to the movie. They're by the river and Fassbender's character wades out into the middle and invites one of the girls in. Despite not being able to swim the fearless Mia strides out. Now in the water she slowly drives one of the docile fish towards Fassbender and he closes his hands on it. The camera cuts to it gasping on the grass. Fassbender explains that it is kinder to skewer it than to let it die slowly, and he deftly dispatches it with a stick. The mother and youngest daughter are horrified but Mia seems to understand this is how it has to be.

Don't want to spoil the film so I won't describe the rest of it, but after Mia has been through a whole raft of shit that would be a lot for anyone, let alone a 15 girl, she returns to the caravans where the old horse was chained up.

By now she is friendly with one of the lads who lives there (the one who saved her from the rapists by letting the dog off the lead). She asks where the horse is and he responds by saying it was old and sick and had to be put down, so they shot it. After looking at the horse box where the creature died she breaks down in tears for the first time.

Nature as a necessary escape  

The horse was trapped and despite her efforts it died in chains. This and the title of the film are references to the trappings of her life, the confines that she can't seem to escape although she can see another world through the glass.

This is what nature offers, an encounter with an existence that doesn't have all these complications, something simple and operating to a completely different set of rules. Another world, which must to appeal to anyone with seemingly inescapable troubles.