——"The Troubles of Young Werther",
"Fish Tank", was a movie that had a great response last year. It received a good evaluation as a participating film at the Cannes Film Festival. It's just that I've only recently discovered this golden gem. It made me smell a familiar irritable smell, which I smelled in "Rage of Youth", and saw it on the teenager who held a pistol to his head angrily but dared not shoot , pervasive restlessness and anxiety.
The story takes place in England. In Britain, where you are used to being conservative, you may be surprised to see such a rough and unintelligible film. Maybe you are more accustomed to films like "Growing Up Education". The story is old-fashioned and nothing new, and the ending is unexpected. The safest way to deal with it. And "Growing Education" star Carey Mulligan (Carey Mulligan) won the "Best Dressed Actress" when she participated in the Oscars, and she was fashionable and beautiful. Our heroine, Katie Jarvis, was caught arguing with her boyfriend in a subway station after director Andrea Arnold had interviewed thousands of actresses , none of them are satisfied. When "Fish Tank" was well received, Katie was already at home waiting for labor, and she had no intention of working hard in the entertainment industry.
15-year-old Mia lives on the fringes of British society with her mother and sister. They are not a glamorous crowd. Mia has never been a quiet girl, she likes to dance in an empty room with headphones on, her thin body dangling in hip-hop clothes. When she sees others dancing, she will deliberately provoke and even do it. She is not an obedient girl. You won't see the well-behaved girl in "Growing Up Education", and she has no dream of being admitted to Oxford. At most, only special schools will become her home, so she is still full of reluctance. She always talks back to her mother and is not angry with her sister. Sometimes I also try to get a bottle of wine to drink. She was also full of foul language and dissatisfied with anything. Living at the bottom, she fought in this way, but no one came to rescue her.
Time passed slowly. She still roams the streets, she still dances, and her life is trivial and messy. You will feel bored at this point. Suddenly, you see Mia, and you see her looking at a white horse that is tied. She secretly threw stones at the chains but did not want to be discovered by her master, and was teased by a group of bad boys. At first you thought it was a prank, but she did it again, same move. At this time, you suddenly understand that she just wants to free the horse.
At this time, I was suddenly moved by this living girl who did not understand so well. She saw the old horse tied up, and she wanted it back to the days of running. This reminds me of Nietzsche crying while holding a horse. Why did he cry because of a horse he didn't know? Because of the feeling. Because in his imagination, he felt that an innocent horse was beaten, just like being beaten himself. The identification with the life value of the horse made Nietzsche empathize with him. Horses that were originally galloping freely in nature, since they were trained by human beings with ingenuity and wisdom, worked hard for human beings and paid so much sweat, what qualifications do human beings have to whip them with whips at every turn? Free souls are connected. Philosophers who despaired of human nature saw that free and noble horses were cruelly treated by human beings, and they could not resort to words and cried.
I don't know what the director's intention is, I secretly think that behind this scene is a great connection with Nietzsche. On the third visit, when Mia learned that the old horse was dead, she buried her head in her arms and finally cried. Feelings are vented at this moment.
Maybe Mia didn't have a sympathy for horses, but made an assumption in her heart: if the horse can escape, maybe she can fly away from this place like a horse, escape a messy home and a bad school, and go to another kind of life. So, Ma's death shattered her assumptions.
Her life had no hope of escape until her mother brought a man home. The lover this time is Connor. Mia's territory broke into a man for no reason. Without much communication, Mia made no secret of her disgust for this man. The emotional change occurred when he drove his family to the countryside. Catching fish in the river, the atmosphere between the two eased a little. This is also the only place in the entire film where the fish is shot, and the fish struggles for a few moments before moving, and it ends up being their dinner.
It was also here that Mia danced for a man for the first time. The second time they danced for it, the two broke through the bottom line and had a relationship. At this time, you may say that the director originally wanted to show an incestuous relationship. This is somewhat similar to "Growing Education". It's just that this unethical love ended with Mia kidnapping Connor's daughter. After Mia finds out about Connor's real life, she kidnaps his daughter to the coast, and the little girl nearly drowns in the quarrel between the two. This is much more brilliant than "Growing Education". In "Growing Up Education", it is based solely on the relationship between a loli and a middle-aged uncle. The relationship ends, the girl grows up, gets education for growth, and finally enters the dream school Oxford. But the reality is nowhere near as good as the movie portrays. So we see the stubborn Mia sneaking into the man's house and then abducting the little girl. Later, the man rushed up and slapped Mia. We feel heartbroken and pity, in the empty and terrible factory, in the uninhabited field, by the river, Mia expresses her dissatisfaction and disappointment in this way. From this day on, she lost her love both physically and spiritually. Mia has really grown up.
This is where things should end.
The magic touch in the film is Mia's dance with her mother when she decides to leave home. After the white horse is dead, the kind boy invites Mia to travel to Wales. As Mia dances in the cramped room with her mother and sister, the three women strike a wonderful balance. In this part, the film is restrained and turbulent, full of emotion. There is no swearing in the past, and the body swaying with the music depicts the indescribable affection. This is how they exist. So, in the end, my sister will replace "I love you" with "I hate you", which is still so moving.
There is no fish tank in the film. But the title seems to represent the situation Mia is in, a transparent, invisible bondage. The youthful Mia longed to break free. To combat physical constraints, she chose to dance; to combat psychological constraints, she fell in love with her mother's lover. But no matter what, in the end, she ran into the distance like an unruly horse.
By the way, there is also the music we are very familiar with - "California Dreaming" by Bobby Womack. So, go watch a movie!
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