The Film Fish Tank as a Coming-Of-Age Story - Movie Review Example

Outline how Fish Tank can be read as a coming-of-age story, and what is innovative about how Andrea Arnold films it The film, Fish Tank, portrays the contradictions of adolescence in a manner rarely captured by any other film, thus making it a typical coming-of-age story that creates interesting insights into the teenage sexuality exploration and vulnerabilities. Andrea Arnold has applied music and soundtrack innovations as the best tool for portraying the teenage obsession, emotional needs and aggressiveness. Mia Williams is a fifteen year-old girl whose adolescence developments have antagonized her against both her mother and her younger sister (Ebert, 2010:n.p.). Additionally, Mia is not only in a constant state of war with her family but also with the world around her, where she can no longer be able to keep even her best friend, Keely. Her adolescence obsessions have taken the form of love for hip-hop music. She listens to the music and secretly practices the dance moves in a deserted apartment. However, the search for attention is the major adolescence trait that eventually landed Mia into sexual vulnerability and exploitation by her mother’s boyfriend, Connor OReily (Mullen, 2009:17). The teenage adolescence changes in the life of Mia takes the form of both emotional and physical changes that creates more energy in her. However, since she lacks the best way of utilizing the newly developing energies, she dedicates most of it into hip-hop music and dancing, while the rest is applied toward fighting the world around her, such that she is constantly engaged in feuds with her age mate friends, family and eventually with her mother’s boyfriend and his family. Therefore, Fish Tank is a film that has accurately captured both the emotional and physical aggression as key adolescence developments that antagonizes the adolescents against the rest of the world, as they seek to establish their own space in life (Horeck & Kendall, 2011:12). The film has applied soundtrack and music innovation as the means of advancing the themes of love, emotional attachment and physical and verbal aggression that comes with the developments in adolescence, through featuring multiple hip-hop music as a major element throughout the film. Lack of decency is a major characteristic of the film, Fish Tank, which goes a long way to develop the coming-of-age story in a more real and tangible manner. Adolescence is a stage of life that comes with emotional needs and physical developments that gradually orientates the adolescent towards adulthood. However, when such changes are not closely monitored and shaped in a positive direction, they tend to create hostile behaviors that eventually affect the adolescent negatively by developing behavioral characteristics that lacks decency. Therefore, the adolescence development is mostly characterized by conflicts of interest between the adolescent and the society around, which is characteristic of Mia Williams, the teenage character in the film, Fish Tank (Budt, 2009:69). It is the antagonistic behaviors that are portrayed by Mia throughout the film, Fish Tank that makes the film be read as a coming-of-age story. The narration in the film lacks the decency expected of a solid family life; where shaping the character of the adolescent Mia has been left to the world. The outcome is the rise of anger, isolation and aggressiveness that serves to distance her even more from her family and the rest of the society that is supposed to be closely monitoring and shaping her life. Antagonism in adolescence is created in the process of the adolescent trying to create own identity based on individual understanding and perception of the surrounding world on the one hand, and the society is trying to shape the adolescent behavior and life outlook differently, on the other hand. Thus, it is only when the society succeeds in shaping the adolescence outlook of the surrounding world positively, that a sense of decency is created. However, where the society has not been able to tame the aggressive physical and emotional developments of the adolescent in a more positive manner, the outcome is the lack of decorum and politeness on the side of the adolescent, which eventually breeds waywardness that is characteristic of Mia Williams, the adolescent girl character in the film, Fish Tank (Mullen, 2009:18). Mia is an isolated and highly antagonistic girl, who does not seem to be accessing any meaningful help that could shape her adolescence developments positively. The important people in Mia’s life such as her mother and her mother’s boyfriend that could have played a vital role in shaping her character at this crucial stage of development, turns out to be acting on the contrary to the expectation. Mia’s mother, Joanne, is not actively involved in shaping the behavior and attitudes of her daughter towards different aspects of life. On the contrary, she is withdrawn from her life such that Mia has to create her own space through violently interacting with the world around her. On the other hand, her mother’s boyfriend is not only reinforcing Mia’s waywardness, but also taking advantage of her emotional attachment needs and the need for attention to exploit her sexually (Budt, 2009:70). Sexual curiosity is the other theme that has been extensively explored in the film, Fish Tank, which then serves to make the film read as a coming-of-age story (Horeck & Kendall, 2011:21). The adolescent development comes with the hormonal changes that create high sexual tension within the adolescent’s body, prompting the need for sexual exploration and adventures. In this respect, it is only natural that any story that has to deal with the adolescent development be integrated with the theme of sexuality and sexual curiosity as a major component in the narration. The concept of sexual curiosity and sexual tension has been highly captured in the film Fish Tank, most especially revolving around the character of the adolescent character in the film, Mia Williams (Ebert, 2010:n.p.). Mia is highly curious about adult life such that she secretly spies on her mother and her boyfriend when they are having sex (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). This occurrence accelerates the sexual fantasy in Mia further, which in turn makes her more vulnerable to the sexual advances of Connor, eventually causing Mia to engage in sex with him, despite the fact that he was her mother’s boyfriend. Sexual curiosity tends to increase at the adolescent stage, mainly due to the physical developments in the body of the adolescents, as well as due to the emotional needs that creates the urge for the adolescents to be more attracted to the opposite sex. Therefore, Mia tends to be more attracted to Connor since he is the only male figure that is close in her life, owing to the fact that she is the daughter of a single mother (Budt, 2009:68). Mia is curious about the sexual encounter between her mother and her boyfriend, such that she cannot help but spy on them when they are engaging in sex. The effect of this curiosity is that Mia becomes even more sexually needy and thus easily give-in when her mother’s boyfriend makes sexual advances towards her. Mia develops sexual attraction towards her mother’s boyfriend simply because he appeared to be kind to her, while at the same time seemed as the only person who reciprocated her needs for attention. The sexual attraction towards Connor develops when he took Mia and her family to a fishing expedition, and taught Mia how to catch fish by hand (Ebert, 2010:n.p.). The sexual attraction later develops into high sexual curiosity for Mia. Additionally, Mia develops attraction towards Billy, one of the men who also appeared to be kind to her, after she was engaged in freeing a horse that appeared to be starved, only to be assaulted by Billy’s brothers, who were the owners of the horse (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). It is the sexual curiosity and the sexual tension that surrounds the life of Mia throughout the film that makes the film Fish Tank easily readable as a coming-of-age story. Defiance, a major theme in the film Fish Tank, is yet the other film aspect that makes the film to be read as a coming-of-age story. Adolescent is not only an antagonistic stage in life, but also a stage where a high level of defiance is developed, especially towards anything or anyone that tries to stop the adolescents from pursuing life as they may deem suitable. Mia has been applied as a highly defiant character in the film Fish Tank, since she is rarely agreeing with her family or even the people around her (Mullen, 2009:17). Her defiance is first depicted through verbal aggression at the beginning of the film, when she throws a stone to a storey apartment to catch the attention of one of the girls she had a conflict. When she is confronted by a man residing in the apartment she replies that her action was meant to “give her a message”, after which she applies abusive and vulgar language. Further, Mia is constantly engaged in a domestic quarrel with her mother due to her defiant behavior, and at one time when she is asked what is wrong by her mother, she replies "You are what is wrong with me" (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). Mia’s defiant behavior is also manifested, when she finds a horse that appears to be starving and goes ahead to free it, despite the fact that she did not even know the owners. She is also engaged in physical aggression through assaulting one of the girls she found dancing in a play area by head butting her (Ebert, 2010:n.p.). Mia is not only verbally and physically offensive to people of her age, but she is also offensive to anyone she thinks is behaving inappropriately according to her own understanding. Thus, Mia breaks into Connor’s house after he had left her mother, and is even later involved in kidnapping Connor’s young daughter, Keira, whom she almost drowned in the river (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). This incidence caused her to be physically assaulted by Connor, after they had been involved in a long chase through the fields. It is such defiant and physically aggressive behavior that are extensively manifested by Mia throughout the film Fish Tank, which are typical of adolescence developments, that serves to make the film to be read as a story of coming-of-age. The film Fish Tank comes out as innovative in the way Andrea Arnold films it, when perceived from the music and soundtracks application and integration. This is because, the innovative application of music and soundtrack by Andrea Arnold in the film Fish Tank comes in the form of matching the theme of different scenes and episodes with the soundtrack that is complementary and representative of Mia’s behavior. The film does not only use love music to represent love and sexual attraction throughout, but also uses vulgar, offensive and controversial hip-hop music that is representative of the aggressive and defiant culture. The hip-hop soundtracks featured in the film Fish Tank are highly complementary of Mia’s aggressive behavior, since all these soundtracks are aggressive in their tunes, rhythms and also lyrics. The soundtrack ‘California Dreamin’ has been applied by Andrea Arnold, as a representation of Mia William’s dreamy life of a hip-hop star (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). This dream saw her enlist in a dance audition that she did not succeed. One of the aggressive music that Mia watches and dances is the song ‘Down 4 U’, sang by Ja Rule and Ashanti (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). Andrea Arnold applies the lyrics of this song to complement the defiant behavior that Mia portrays towards her mother. The other aggressive, vulgar and offensive soundtrack that has been applied by Andrea Arnold in the film Fish Tank is the hip-hop song ‘Lifes a Bitch’ by Nas (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). This soundtrack is applied to represent the attitude and perception that Mia has developed about life, since she does not seem to discover anything positive about her family or even the society around her. Further, Andrea Arnold applies several soundtracks to represent the love and sexual attraction themes in the film. The soundtracks ‘Me & U’ by Cassie and ‘Show Me Love’ by Robin S are applied to represent the theme of love and sexual attraction that features throughout the film, especially to match with the feelings of sexual attraction between Mia and Connor (Arnold, 2009:n.p.). References Arnold, A. (2009). Dir. Fish Tank (2009). United Kingdom: BBC Films. [Film]. Budt, K. L. (2009). Festivals Cannes 2009: Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank Makes the Most Waves. Film Criticism 33(3), 67-71. Ebert, R. (3 February 2010). Fish Tank. Chicago Sun-Times. Web. December 25, 2014. < http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fish-tank-2010> Horeck, T. & Kendall, T. (2011). The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. Oxford University Press. Mullen, L. (2009). Estate of the mind. Sight and Sound 19(10), 16-19. Read More