THE SHAPE OF WATER: Fish Love

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones
Runtime: 123 mins.
2017

Guillermo del Toro's American movies have tended to be feasts of design and concept that leave lingering questions in terms of execution. His strengths as a filmmaker are specific and his weaknesses are vague. Every time he puts out a movie, though, it's worth paying attention; it's clear the man is a visionary.

With The Shape of Water, it's especially difficult to ding the movie for being worse-executed than its peers, because as far as I can tell it has no peers. Shape is, after all, a comic drama romance sci-fi horror fairy tale thriller. Some of those categories might be a stretch, but perhaps Shape is ill-used by categorization in general. The plot involves a mute cleaning woman named Elisa (Sally Hawkins) who befriends a Creature from the Black Lagoon-esque fish monster who has been contained in the facility where she works. As usual, though, del Toro has little interest in foregrounding the plot, so neither will we.

Except for the one big thing to mention, and there will be spoilers in this paragraph. About halfway through the film, after Elisa has kidnapped the fish man so as to stave off his dissection... she begins sleeping with him. It's a truly incredible they went there?? moment, and one that requires a mind boggling tonal juggling act on del Toro's part. The first half of the film, after all, is structured more like a boy-and-his-dog style cross-species friendship story with a dash of classical horror. To make the transition to a full-blown romance without breaking the movie is an incredible gesture, one that ends up being the entire point of the whole endeavor. The whole film, as it turns out, is designed to make us sympathetic towards this shocking taboo. In doing so, it becomes a film about transhumanism, much more complicated than the commentary on prejudice we might have been expecting.

That bold central decision works because the movie has no intention of leering at Elisa and the creature, or accosting us with the titillation of it all. The gesture is a loving one. It's a beautiful moment thanks in large part to the way we have gotten to know her. Sally Hawkins is an unparalleled actor, and del Toro's greatest weapon. She makes clear the tremendous depth of Elisa's experience, yet gives us little access to it. Elisa has so clearly spent her entire life trying to keep out of the way of society due to the immense pain that constant discrimination brings. Del Toro connects the dots between the ableism she experiences and the homophobia surrounding her best friend Giles (Richard Jenkins), or the racism that her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) has to deal with. Yet it is thanks to the power and nuance of Hawkins's performance that we can also extend our full empathy to the speciesism that accosts the Creature, who has also clearly spent his entire life trying to avoid the steel trap of society. When Elisa chooses to take action, we are thrilled because we can sense the years of accumulated regret that come from her decision to remain quiet.

It's far from a perfect movie. (Could such a movie as this conceivably approach perfection?) As the film grinds to its conclusion, it adapts more thriller elements that feel inevitable, but inherently less interesting than what came before. Then there's the matter of the obnoxiously twee bookend narrations. But these faults are more than offset by the best scenes in the movie, like the unspeakably lovely black and white song and dance number inserted as Elisa's fantasy--the one time we are truly allowed access to her inner life.

The Shape of Water is worth experiencing for its stellar individual elements alone: the incredible monster design, the bold narrative choices, Hawkins's performance, Michael Shannon chewing scenery, that beautiful dance number. Whether the experience writ large will be worth it to you depends largely on how on board you are with the jumbly nature of the project, united by sheer willpower and a tremendous sensitivity for its central figures.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS