“The Shape of Water” is beautiful. Writer and Director Guillermo del Toro tells the story of the shape of love, that it can look any way you can imagine. His screenplay along with co-writer Vanessa Taylor tells the poignant tale of feeling alone in the world, and the possibility of love that we all deserve. Sally Hawkins is amazing as lonely mute Elisa discovers her greatness within, her voice. Hawkins is so moving in her visage and silence. “The Shape of Water” is the strange love story of Elisa and the noble amphibious-man Creature.
Discovering that the Creature’s life is threatened, Elisa implores her dear friend Giles, played by compassionate Richard Jenkins, to help save him. Through sign language Elisa says, “When he looks at me, he does not know how I am incomplete. He sees me as I am.” That breaks your heart. Elisa just wants to be loved. She just wishes to be gotten. We all do. “The Shape of Water” eloquently expresses humanity. Awesome Doug Jones literally inhabits the Creature through CGI effects and all. His languid movement and gentle expressions illuminate the noble Creature’s generous heart of the one, who loves Elisa back.
Dan Lausten’s cinematography mesmerizes. Elisa is the janitor along with her friend Zelda, played by strong Octavia Spencer, on the midnight shift at the secret Government facility in Washington D.C. set in the 1960’s during the height of the Cold War. The story set mostly at night has brilliant tones of gray and muted lighting in the midst of this touching love story fable. Del Toro gracefully balances the dichotomy of the narratives. Lausten and del Toro create the astounding images of Jones’s shimmering regal blue Creature, nearly human enough for us to cheer on.
Amazingly del Toro’s world of “The Shape of Water” is mostly light or dark, little gray. The light is Elisa and Giles. Narrator Giles opens the tale of “the princess without voice”. Jenkins’s Giles is the old unemployed commercial artist, who suffers over his sexual identity.
Brilliant Michael Shannon as Government Agent Strickland is the dark. Strickland captured the legendary Creature from the Amazon bringing him back to DC to uncover his secrets. He mercilessly tortures the Creature. In the meantime, the Russians are also interested in the mysterious “asset” and pursue him as well. Strickland represents the one downside of del Toro’s narrative. As embodied by Shannon, Strickland is clever, cruel, vicious and insufferably pious. He is also bigoted. He has no nuance. Greater villains are much grayer. Though gray comes in the form of wise Michael Stuhlberg as Dr. Hoffstetler, the dedicated scientist who seems stand for the Creature.
We first see Hawkins’s Elisa awake to begin her janitor night shift. She sets the timer to boil her eggs while she routinely pleasures herself in the bath. Elisa bares telltale scars on her neck. She packs two bagged lunches, one for her apartment neighbor friend Giles (Jenkins). She smiles and takes her bus to work.
Hawkins is understated power in how she expresses Elisa’s profound loneliness and hopefulness without saying. Much of the beauty of “The Shape of Water” is in the unsaid. Being with the Creature though unlikely as it seems, we get that it is Elisa’s “perchance to dream”. Hawkins harnesses Elisa’s authentic desperation, and her great heart touches us with the lighter side of our humanity.
“The Shape of Water” is the fantastical love story fable. The great fables allow us to enter that world of wonder. “The Shape of Water” is the possibility of love no matter what it looks like. That is the world worth visiting, and perhaps living in as well.
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Originally Published on IMDb
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