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Fish Tank: Basic Plotting is Overcome by Superb Humanization

By Carrie Stemke · August 16, 2014

During his career, Michael Fassbender has made some interesting choices and shown a knack for picking good roles and good movies. One of these choices was Fish Tank, a 2009 film written and directed by Andrea Arnold. Fish Tank tells the story of Mia, an angry, lonely 15 year old who becomes infatuated with her mother’s boyfriend, Connor.

In this film, the characters and their actors make the movie. Katie Jarvis, who plays Mia, isn’t an actress at all; in fact, she was discovered by one of Arnold’s casting assistants while fighting with her boyfriend in a train station. Sometimes, a lack of experience can lead to a film falling apart spectacularly, but in the case of Fish Tank, Jarvis is the perfect choice to play Mia, and her inexperience and the raw emotion she shows in her performance suggests to the audience that she knows how Mia feels on some level. Then there’s Fassbender, who plays handsome, selfish Connor, a man who crosses boundaries and breaks the trust of the women around him with little thought to their feelings. Fassbender’s performance is excellent because he plays Connor as a genuine human character. Connor is a man that many of us have met, and there’s no particular reason given for his actions. Many times, filmmakers try to wrap up a character like Connor with a “good reason” for what he does or some other little neat and tidy backstory, but Arnold didn’t give in to that temptation and instead leaves Connor’s choices without reason or closure, either for the people he hurts or the audience. Kierston Wareing nails her supporting role as Mia’s struggling single mother, a woman whose immaturity prevents her from being a good parent to either of her daughters and makes it obvious that she very much wants to be loved and wanted by a handsome man.

The plot is decent, but nothing particularly special. There are many movies about isolated, volatile teenagers with difficult lives, and based on the story alone, Fish Tank would not stand out much in any way. The success and popularity of this film, which won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was the 2010 winner of the BAFTA for Best British Film, should be credited to the beautifully written characters and the actors who played them. The real, human qualities in all of their performances make Fish Tank a satisfying, enthralling winner.