The Shape of Water- Undeniably Beautiful
I love Guillermo Del Toro, he’s such a whimsically unique director who puts so much craft and effort into the work he puts out that every film he releases manages to be entertaining as well as meaningful. ‘Shape of Water’ was met with universal praise from all audiences on its release, storming the awards season and gaining both tremendous critical and commercial success. It is one of the films that gained this notoriety in its quality yet deserved every inch of recognition this beautiful film got. A romantic exploration of the Cold War Red Scare symbolically explored through an unknown monster and those who didn’t fit into the American Idealism.
Del Toro writes films in an interesting way, he has this fascination with fantasy and folklore using dark unfamiliar worlds and clashing them with deeply familiar parts of history, criticising the society in a truly unique way. ‘The Shape of Water’ uses this but creates a beautifully interwoven love story exploring the xenophobia of the setting and the ignorance of the unknown. There is something about how the film balances all these aspects, a pace that pays attention to the aspects that Del Toro clearly enjoys showing. There is no explanation to the creature’s origins, the blossoming romance between it and Elisa is treated as a regular romance, Del Toro builds her character to the point you understand her motivation for wanting to be with it. It's subtle, economic writing that I think requires a lot of skill and pays off immensely in the end.
The cast is simply superb, I think it might be something about Del Toro as a filmmaker that makes performers give it there are all. Sally Hawkins proves the power of non-verbal performance as the mute Elisa, giving her a complex character through minimalistic precise performance skills. She demonstrates her longing and timid nature by contrasting her body language when with people she trusts and people she doesn’t. In an outstanding performance, she manages to show what it feels like to be in love through simply a facial expression and has one of the standout performances of recent memory. Richard Jenkins compliments her character brilliantly as her understanding father figure, he cares for her but also manages to show his own vulnerabilities in being gay in the 1960s. I’m a bit torn about his character as sometimes Del Toro pushes his romanticised quirkiness to feel a bit hyperbolic and out of place, but then includes really nice subtle scenes.
Michael Shannon proves himself as the hideously grotesque man in charge of the facility, he makes some scenes Impossible to watch echoing an equally iconic performance like Captain Vidal in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’. He is symbolically one note, Del Toro portraits him as the nuclear man that America idealised in the 60s, the perfect home and a need for a perfect life that hides exaggerated sadism and lustful villainy. But, the performance that often gets ignored in ‘the Shape of Water’ is the fantastic Doug Jones as the amphibious creature. Jones creates a creature with its own distinct body language and expression. Combined with genuinely beautiful makeup and costume work, this creature is full of personality and pathos, feeling equally unfamiliar and weirdly human recognisable congruently.
The aesthetic is a very important part in Del Toro’s work. Basing a film's visual language on the idea of water is ridiculously ambitious. With incredible set dressing and a consistent non-naturalistic use of water running through each scene, from the scenes in the bathroom to a world that always seems to be raining I love this fresh and unique take on visuals. He really pushes the stylistic elements of the film, with a few scenes that will surprise you with their abstract spectacle set pieces that have an emotional impact and are uniquely entertaining. He starts with a simple aesthetic and broadens into creating this beautiful rich world with characters that are distinct, stylised and feel like they belong in this new enticing world Del Toro paints.
It’s hard to talk about ‘The Shape of Water’ because it really is a film jampacked with so much undeniable beauty and substance that people often call it self-indulgent and nonsensical. I personally think that Del Toro has created this whimsical romanticised tone as a critique of the romanticised ideals of a Cold War America, there is moments of horrific brutal horror that are always linked with the setting and this war. I love contrasting this with a delicate love story because the plots work so well together, and I think the ending is genuinely astounding and is bound to bring a tear to your eye.