WORTH GETTING IMMERSED IN
At a time when Hollywood often seems bereft of any semblance of originality, along comes Mexican director Guillermo del Toro to remind everyone what a unique, magical world the cinematic experience can be.
In “The Shape of Water,” his most impressive work since “Pan’s Labyrinth” 11 years ago, the visual stylist spins an adult fairy tale that takes elements from “Beauty and the Beast” and recasts them in an alternative universe that’s a wonderfully rendered twist on our own. The result is a science-fiction/romance/magical realist mash-up that works as a captivating singular vision.
The time is the early ’60s, the place is Baltimore, and Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman who always hews closely to her daily routine before leaving for her job as a maid on the night shift at a government lab. She makes her hard-boiled egg, checks in with her unemployed artist neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins) and arrives at work just in time for her chatty best friend and co-worker, Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who has held a place in line for her, to punch the time clock.
Her sense of order is upended when government agent Richard Strickland (a cruel Michael Shannon) shows up at the lab with classified cargo that turns out to be an amphibious humanoid creature found in the wilds of South America. He wants it tested and dissected to see if it offers secrets that might counter Russia’s Cold War threat. Opposing him is scientist Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who agrees the creature needs to be studied but wants to keep it alive, arguing that a sentient being shouldn’t be slaughtered on the altar of global confrontation.
But Elisa becomes fascinated with Amphibian Man (Doug Jones, who played the Pale Man in “Pan’s Labyrinth”), sneaking into the chamber in which he’s kept, introducing him to the simple joys of hard-boiled eggs and recorded music. These outcasts, who can’t speak to each other, communicate on a deeper, more primal level. Through him, she finds her voice; he finds connection in a hostile environment; and both end up doing something neither could have imagined not long before.
Del Toro always loves his monsters — think of the fighting behemoths in “Pacific Rim” or the insectoids of “Mimic” — but here, the monster isn’t the one in chains under observation but the one who put him there.
Meanwhile, the once ordered outside world seems to be spinning into chaos. When the TV in Giles’ apartment is showing civil rights tumult, he quickly changes it to the security of an old Hollywood movie. But he won’t be able to hold the tide against the future for long, as the battle with his own personal demons prove.
As expected with del Toro, who co-wrote the script with Vanessa Taylor, the visual element of “The Shape of Water” is especially inventive. Along with Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen (who also did del Toro’s “Crimson Peak”) and composer Alexandre Desplat, he has fashioned a place that at once feels as familiar and nostalgic as your grandparents’ old photo album and as foreign and threatening as the lagoon where Amphibian Man spawned.
But it’s up to Hawkins, who has to express herself without uttering a word, Spencer and Jenkins to give “The Shape of Water” a beating human heart — and they do so admirably.