Fish Tank Analysis

Fish Tank Dir. Andrea Arnold (2008)

Andrea Arnold, OBE (born 5 April 1961) is an English filmmaker and former actress. She won an Academy Award for her short film Wasp in 2005 and has since made the leap to feature films and television, including Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey, all of which have won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Most recently, she directed three episodes of the Emmy-winning series Transparent.

Arnold was born in Erith Kent, the eldest of four children. She was born when her mother was only 16 years old and her father was 17, and they separated when she was very young. Her mother had to bring up all four children alone, which is reminiscent of Arnold's own directorial debuted short, Wasp. When people are asked if the story is in any way biographical, Arnold replies "I grew up in a working class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. 

As a young girl, she was writing dark stories about human experience. In an interview, Arnold speaks about how when she was a mere 10 years old, she wrote her first play that expressed her "horror" of the slave trade, and a few years later while studying for a dance GCSE, she made a performance piece; "I took quotes from the Diary of Anne Frank and read them aloud as I moved around the room. All the other kids would just bung on some pop music and dance. I remember the examiners sitting there looking at me, perplexed.Arnold left high school when she was 16, when she was drawn to becoming an actress. When Arnold was 18 years old she began working as a host and actress for a children's TV show called No. 73. She worked in TV for the next 10 years, while continually writing on the side. Arnold realised she could turn her stories into films, so she studied at the American Film Institute of Los Angeles where she gained experience in the film industry. After finishing school and returning to Britain she had her daughter, Coral and began making short films for TV.

Fish Tank is a British film set in Essex on a council estate. The films genre is Drama and Social-realism, it also has several themes including Conflict, friendship, love, violence and relationships. The budget for the film was £3 million and in the box office it almost doubled grossing £5.9 million. The companies who produced the film are BBC Films, UK Film Council and Limelight Communication. The film is about Mia Williams, a socially isolated 15-year-old who lives with her single mother, Joanne. The mother's new boyfriend, Conor, becomes attracted to Mia and has sex with her. Fish Tank was well-received and won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It also won the 2010 BAFTA for Best British Film. 

Katie Jarvis, who plays Mia, had no prior acting experience. She was cast for the film after one of Arnold's casting assistants saw her arguing with her boyfriend in Tilbury Town,which is the railway station featured in the film.

Shooting began 28 July 2008 over the course of six weeks,and was filmed in chronological order. At the end of each week the actors were given the scripts for the scenes that they would perform the following week, so that when they performed each scene they were largely unaware of what would happen to their characters later in the film.

The opening scene of the movie is packed full of micro-features that can be deeply analysed. From the opening scene we can establish where the film is set, what the area is like and what Mia's character is like. In the opening scene, we see Mia catching her breath and then she goes over to her phone and calls her friend. From the conversation we see that Mia is more of a less educated person.