The Shape of Water - Review

The Shape of Water

From acclaimed story teller, Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth), comes the love story - fantasy tale “The Shape of Water”. An other worldly story set against the backdrop of the Cold War era of America verses the USSR circa 1962.

From the top we find a hidden high-security government laboratory, filled with army security, scientist and an abundance of day laborers, one of which is a slight, submissive and quiet laborer named Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins). She works at the top secretive facility as a janitor (oddly enough in high heels and dress) then clocks out at the end of her day to go home alone to a small apartment. Eliza has no friends outside of her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her landlord Giles (Richard Jenkins) because she is a mute and societally shunned; trapped in a life of daily isolation from her disability. And while her lost voice is an inexplicable mystery from scars on her neck she still is quite capable of hearing and able to respond to others very elegantly via sign language all too conveniently interpreted by her coworker and best friend Zelda and Giles.

One day at work Elisa's life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment in the form of an amphibious half human – half iguana lizard looking creature that is brought into facility from the jungles of Brazil.

Captured to be examined and researched by scientist there, the creature is shackled and chained under high security protocols in a basement laboratory with an indoor pool filled with slimy green water to accommodate the natural habitat where he was found. Elisa and Zelda are charged daily with cleaning up the laboratory from their series of test and experiments conducted on the creature, as well as from the blood from the brutal treatment inflicted by the head of security by a man named “Strickland” (Michael Shannon). He is throughout the film is sadistically frustrated by the creature’s inability to communicate in a discernable language.

Elisa witnesses the brutality by Strickland one day and immedaitely feels empathy for the creature, probably relating to his dilemma of being ostracized by not communicating. Feeling that connection to the creature and using some ingenuity on her part, she finds a way daily to sneak into the lab to visit the creature on her lunch break to share her hard boiled eggs and love of music with him. What ensues is a love story aka “beauty and the beast” through their forged deep emotional connection, not from words but rather through the silent expressions of respect, of touching and the simple act of compassion.

REVIEW: “The Shape of Water” is on everyones short list as an almost a lock to be nominated for a Best Picture nomination, with Best Actress for Sally Hawkins and other Academy Award nominations for technical considerations as well. There is just one problem, it won’t be because I had a vote. While I found it very beautiful to look at and filled with some top Hollywood talent, the overall plot was slightly above average on the interesting meter that never really connected with me as something plausible or reasonable, even in the back drop of it being a pure fantasy.

It wants to be too many things. It wants to be taken seriously as a dramatic love story with its subtle homage to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers films and yet I found the relationship very one dimensional, lacking any depth as to why they were drawn to each other than Eliza having a powerful libido. I found their interplay with one another almost laughable to even contemplate. And it also wants to be some cold war era spy thriller with the full measure of a subplot of the evil empire (USSR) and espionage. In both instances theses competing plots tried to make the case of “falling in love by conquering all obstacles’ as some remarkable tale of romance. But for me it wasn’t. Rather I felt less incline to be naturally drawn to this as a genuine fantasy and more forcibly compelled to surrender to it as a tale of bestiality romance. YUCK.

While “The Shape of Water” does try earnestly to being something very lovely to contemplate with its colorful sets design, movie musical tones and overt long silent love gazes meant to suggest real romantic tension between the two principle “love lizards”.   It never generated any real dramatic tension as far as I can see. Especially with an ending which from my perspective I could see coming a mile away.

Still I give Director Del Toro credit in trying to make a prodigious piece of work with glamour and appropriate atmospherics to sell this as a “by gone era old fashion love story”. And FYI, I am always a bit of a forgiving film fan of creative people taking risk into making something completely original given Hollywood’s yearly propensity to recycle the previously recycled  year after year. So for that I applaud Del Toro efforts for having and using some imagination with the best intensions. 

But in the end, “The Shape of Water” doesn’t transcend the art of romance in any artful new way, it just demands you accept this “slimy watery love tale” without ever questioning any aspect of it which made it for me a “hard water” story to buy.

So, see it but definitely rent it on those whimsical sleepy wintery days when you want to stay in doors and nothing else worth wild is on the TV.

3.00 Stars