A whale of a love story
Shape of Water’s fish tale; review.
Guillermo del Toro, the modern godfather of monster movies, is pretty much the only guy who can pull off a Cold War beauty-and-the-beast story starring a merman.
Like the writer/director’s other works tinged with the otherworldly ( Pan’s Lab
yrinth, Crimson Peak), the stylish and stupendously crafted The Shape of Wa
ter ( eeeg; rated R; in theaters Friday in New York, expands to additional cities through December) swims in romanticism, though in a more adult way: Woman meets cute with a creature from a South American lagoon and sparks fly. It’s a noir fairy tale that touches on the cruelty of man, as well as the heart wanting what (and who) it wants.
In 1962 Baltimore, Elisa (Sally Hawkins) lives a content and quiet, albeit lonely, life working as a night janitor at a government research facility. Voiceless since a childhood trauma, she communicates in sign language with her good-hearted co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), a man who hides his homosexuality at a time when it was necessary to do so.
Acceptance plays a major role in The
Shape of Water, especially as the core relationship is revealed. An amphibian humanoid (Doug Jones) — deemed “The Asset” by his keepers — is secretly brought in from the Amazon, where the locals worshipped him as a god, but is poked, prodded and tortured by a sadistic federal agent named Strickland (Michael Shannon), who considers him just an animal to be controlled.
The fish dude bites back, though, and in the chaos following an incident in which he wounds Strickland, Elisa sneaks in and their eyes lock, creating an instant connection. She can’t speak, he only makes noises, yet they bond when she shares her hard-boiled eggs. The two grow closer, leading Elisa to hatch a plan to bust him out.
Del Toro harks back to the plights and metaphors of old Universal haunts — the misunderstood Frankenstein’s monster, the inherent exoticism of Dracula — in creating his scaly leading man. Thanks to Jones (who also played the amphibious Abe Sapien in del Toro’s
Hellboy movies), the gilled creature exhibits an enchanting humanity and adoration for his amour. You believe that he and Elisa would make love in a water-filled bathroom, and that’s saying something. The scenes that take place in a seemingly undersea world are stunning, and del Toro’s filmmaking technique buoys a love-story narrative that at times feels a little too straightforward for its unorthodox conceit.
Hawkins is terrific in her silent role, using her expressive face to sell Elisa’s dive into love and the complications that arise. Spencer is great, too, as the other half of that duo; Zelda acts as her friend’s voice when the increasingly unstable Strickland hauls them in for questioning after The Asset goes AWOL.
Equally intriguing as the emotional narrative are the timely themes of the era. If an amphibian humanoid with strange abilities was fished out of a jungle, the USA and the Soviets would fight for it, with the Space Race at full tilt and global tensions high.
In that paranoid vein, Shannon gives Strickland an unmistakable menace and a deteriorating moral compass, while Michael Stuhlbarg balances that as a scientist who helps Elisa and Zelda in their mission.
The “monsters are us” aspect resonates with modern audiences who turn on the news and see tragedy daily, though what charms most about del Toro’s fantasy is how two different species find each other, naturally and unmistakably, in a world drowning in hatred and intolerance.