1 9 6 2. Elisa Esposito is mute, single and works as a cleaning lady in a secret US military research facility. Her best friends are her co-worker Zelda and Giles, a gay advertising illustrator. One day, the military fills the pool with a captured amphibian man from the Amazon to research it, but Elisa finds sympathy in the creature's plight while it is abused by Colonel Strickland. Upon hearing that the military plans to disect the creature, Elisa smuggles it out in the laundry van, keeping it in her bathtub. The two fall in love and communicate through sign language. When Strickland finds out that Elisa wants to release the creature in a cannal during rain, which leads to the sea, he shoots them both. However, the amphibian man heals itself, kills Strickland and saves Elisa by jumping with her into the water, transforming her into a sea creature.
Guillermo del Toro's best film is also at the same time his most emotional and tender one, a peculiar re-structuring of Arnold's "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". However, while the latter was only interested in narrow, cheap scares, del Toro crafts a surprisingly thoughtful allegory about outsiders who fall in love, and has understanding for them—all of the characters are actually minorities (Elisa is mute; Zelda is an African-American during the 60s segregation era; Giles is gay) who are in one shape or another persecuted or oppressed for not "fitting in" with the concept of the majority. The monster thus becomes a symbol for these "others". "The Shape of Water" combines a wide range of stories, from "The Beauty and the Beast", through "Splash" up to "The Little Mermaid", yet this bizarre syncretism works thanks to the wonderful performance by Sally Hawkins as Elisa—when she explains to Giles what she sees in the creature, everything falls into its place: "When he looks at me, the way he looks at me... He does not know, what I lack... Or how I am incomplete. He sees me, for what I am, as I am. He's happy to see me. Every time. Every day."
The character of Zelda, played by the very good Octavia Spencer, is there to be a comic relief, and in one scene she mentions her husband: "The man is as silent as the grave. But if farts were flattery, honey, he'd be Shakespeare!" A lot of the story is a stretch—it is hard to think that a cleaning lady would be left inside a dangerous top secret facility alone, without any supervision—yet it unravels like a fairy tale and thus suspends disbelief, especially in the scene where Elisa gets carried away while dancing, her mop hits the aquarium and thus makes an adorably worried facial expression when she asks the amphibian man: "Are you OK?" Del Toro's biggest flaw throughout his movies is in the stereotype bad guys, and here he stumbles in the villain Strickland who is a tad one-dimensional, spending undue amount of time on him instead of on the relationship between Elisa and the amphibian man, which is heavy handed. Yet, the story is so audacious and creative that even the intimate scene of the naked Elisa and the amphibian man hugging is topped by the black and white musical (!) sequence of them dancing, by which the director stands out stylistically from the mould as much as the couple stands out from typical love stories. Del Toro won several awards for the film, completing the tripple "Mexican lucky streak" in the decade, after Cuaron and Inarritu also won awards for their films "Gravity" and "Birdman".
Grade:+++
Guillermo del Toro's best film is also at the same time his most emotional and tender one, a peculiar re-structuring of Arnold's "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". However, while the latter was only interested in narrow, cheap scares, del Toro crafts a surprisingly thoughtful allegory about outsiders who fall in love, and has understanding for them—all of the characters are actually minorities (Elisa is mute; Zelda is an African-American during the 60s segregation era; Giles is gay) who are in one shape or another persecuted or oppressed for not "fitting in" with the concept of the majority. The monster thus becomes a symbol for these "others". "The Shape of Water" combines a wide range of stories, from "The Beauty and the Beast", through "Splash" up to "The Little Mermaid", yet this bizarre syncretism works thanks to the wonderful performance by Sally Hawkins as Elisa—when she explains to Giles what she sees in the creature, everything falls into its place: "When he looks at me, the way he looks at me... He does not know, what I lack... Or how I am incomplete. He sees me, for what I am, as I am. He's happy to see me. Every time. Every day."
The character of Zelda, played by the very good Octavia Spencer, is there to be a comic relief, and in one scene she mentions her husband: "The man is as silent as the grave. But if farts were flattery, honey, he'd be Shakespeare!" A lot of the story is a stretch—it is hard to think that a cleaning lady would be left inside a dangerous top secret facility alone, without any supervision—yet it unravels like a fairy tale and thus suspends disbelief, especially in the scene where Elisa gets carried away while dancing, her mop hits the aquarium and thus makes an adorably worried facial expression when she asks the amphibian man: "Are you OK?" Del Toro's biggest flaw throughout his movies is in the stereotype bad guys, and here he stumbles in the villain Strickland who is a tad one-dimensional, spending undue amount of time on him instead of on the relationship between Elisa and the amphibian man, which is heavy handed. Yet, the story is so audacious and creative that even the intimate scene of the naked Elisa and the amphibian man hugging is topped by the black and white musical (!) sequence of them dancing, by which the director stands out stylistically from the mould as much as the couple stands out from typical love stories. Del Toro won several awards for the film, completing the tripple "Mexican lucky streak" in the decade, after Cuaron and Inarritu also won awards for their films "Gravity" and "Birdman".
Grade:+++
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