|
Film Review: Fish Tank
 "Fish Tank" has a shocking realism but a terrible, beautiful poetry. It's bleak, but teeming with life. It's future-empty, but hope-full. It's about insensitivities, but incredibly sensitive. "Fish Tank" is like gnawing away on a bit of tasteless raw fish but finding nutritious satisfaction. All these tensions exist in this docu-dramatic comment on postmodern Britain and existence among concrete tower blocks, no doubt replicated on a million boringly bland conurbations across the planet.
For teenager Mia, the challenge is to make meaning out of this meaningless mess; out of the excellently observed constant vacuous mesmerism of celebrity bling TV, offering all non-substance materialism cannot bring; out of the clamour for dysfunctional relationship begetting dysfunctional relationship, built upon sand and not rock. In the break down of south Essex, north Thames community, Mia represents the deep stirring and the waking up to 'something else'. "Fish Tank" is not only a prophetic statement of where we're at, but a signpost to where some are going and want to be - desperate for a secure foundation, desperate for some raison d'être, desperate for the truest of loves.
Mia is imbued by the innate knowledge that she has infinite self-worth, hence her awareness of the symbol of the old white nag, once noble, tethered unto death like so many of Mia's contemporaries. Through this, her own chains are loosed, to at least explore other opportunities. Mia's refusal to become enslaved by the night club industry - and the way in which she expresses that refusal - marks her coming-of-age and the birth of the consciousness of her own responsiveness and ability to control and not be controlled.
We must believe that the film's end is not a mere transference to another featureless, futureless wasteland, but to a brighter tomorrow where dreams can be fulfilled and hearts made content and lives made productive. Like the Marshwiggle who remains obedient to the heavenly vision of the Narnian paradise, or the visionary Martin Luther King who likewise remained obedient to the heavenly vision of a desegregated America, Mia 'sees' and seeks her Promised Land, thereby securing it in the core of her very being. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The whole notion that "Fish Tank" is 'poverty porn' and that it should 'go away' is to walk past on the opposite side of the road and never think of asking 'who is my neighbour?'. These are our neighbours. Mia is my neighbour. I know - I work with young people on the estates along the Thames Gateway. Where there is emotional isolation and futurelessness, may there be connecting community and an envisioning environment of empowerment.
Every youth worker in the UK should see "Fish Tank", and weep, and pray, and act. "I have seen the Promised Land."
www.amazon.co.uk/Fish-Tank-DVD-Katie-Jarvis/dp/B002OMYC60/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1271678159&sr=1-1
|
Tim Harrold, 21/09/2009 |
|
|
