MAKING MONSTERS: GUILLERMO DEL TORO
The director of The Shape of Water talks about the mechanics of the fairy tale, the politics of horror and the challenges of creating a gill-man for the 21st century.
Guillermo del Toro’s latest film, The Shape of Water, has been hailed as his best yet, a political fairy tale that tells the love story between a mute cleaning lady and a gillman held captive in a secret government laboratory. Del Toro kindly found the time to talk to FT – his favourite magazine – about the inspiration behind the film, how he built his creature, and his creative process. What makes The Shape of
Water a fairy tale and not a monster movie? A fairy tale normally has a character that discovers something grander, and discovers his or her destiny through that adventure, that rite of passage. In The Shape
of Water it is a woman, who, as in most fairytales, has a humble origin, and discovers a destiny much, much grander than she imagined. In a fairy tale, the mundane existence that the main character leads is revealed not to be his or her destiny. There’s an element in The Shape of Water that would be a spoiler, so I won’t discuss it, but that imbues everything with a divine origin, and predestination.
If this were a monster movie, the hero would be Michael Shannon, and the creature would be an anomaly that needs to be dominated or destroyed, or something that is pernicious. But you definitely wouldn’t see it from the point of view of a cleaning woman falling in love with the creature. The tone is that of a fairy tale, so the visual tone is magical. The images are fastidiously designed, in a way that is not trying to look like reality, but is rather a construction. The camera work, the light, the music, the sound, are all very magical, very much not trying to emulate 1962 – like you would in a realistic movie. Why did you set it in 1962? It’s the end of American innocence. It’s the end of the big promise about the future. It’s placed at that point exactly when America believes it has a huge future. In fact, to me, 1962 is the fall from grace. Because you have the jet fin cars, the kitchens, the fashion… everything talks about modernity. And in the movie, very pointedly, the screenplay talks about those things – the future being hopeful, you know. Later, Kennedy will die and with him, I think, dies an America that exists only in its own dream. America dreams of itself the way they dreamt in 1962. Did you use the setting to illustrate current fears? Yes, very much. I started writing the movie thinking about now. Before Trump, I felt there was a current of racism, misogyny, and prejudice growing, and I wanted to set it in a time that illustrated this, but without making it openly about that. The Creature is the ultimate disenfranchised. He’s not left-wing, he doesn’t have a race, or a creed. He’s ultimately not seen as human, which is the ultimate disenfranchisement. I wanted to make the antagonist a guy that really, really believes he’s a good guy. He thinks of himself as a decent guy, with a very American sort of decency. And you see something dark in him. Yes. Very dark. The Tao says that in order for something to be good, you’re making something bad. In order for you to say something is beautiful, you’re making something ugly. In other words, that type of definition of quality, whether it’s moral, or physical, spiritual, immediately makes a dichotomy. The way that Michael Shannon’s character sees the world, by defining something as good and decent and wholesome, he’s defining something else as indecent, incomplete or deplorable. In order to get this wholesome Saturday Evening
Post notion of America, you are involuntarily creating an undesirable America, impoverished, sub-educated, race-segregated, because that doesn’t belong on that
Saturday Evening Post cover. That’s the type of America he believes in. Why the reference to water as an element? To me, the movie is an antidote to the scepticism of living. It’s about beauty and love. Nowadays, when you talk about hatred, you sound sophisticated; when you talk about love, you sound naïve.
The Creature is the shape of love, in a way. The movie
is about love being the most powerful force in the Universe, and, like water, it has no shape; it takes the shape of whatever the recipient is. Bruce Lee and the Tao both say water is the strongest and most malleable element on Earth: if you put it in a glass, it takes the form of a glass; if you put it in a vase, it takes the form of a vase, and even though it’s very malleable it will go through stone. And the same with love. The shape of love, the shape of water – it’s the same thing.
How did you design the creature?
The Creature is a tribute to all the gill-men in the history of the movies, but not one in particular. The environment is designed to house the creature, because if you put a creature in a normal movie it would look out of place. You need to believe that, within that universe of the movie, the creature is real. And you cannot go completely real because then the rest of the design – the sets, the wardrobe – wouldn’t match.
What was the process like?
It took us approximately 14 months. I paid about a quarter of a million dollars out of my own pocket to have six months to design it. And the sculptor moved to my house, basically, and we worked together, and it was very, very delicate. It’s the most difficult creature we’ve done.
I based some of the ideas on the Japanese engravings, a big Hokusai carp, for example. Then we did about 20 colour schemes. We chose one, and even within that we started adding colours… and we painted the creature from head to toe completely about three or four times – I mean, changed the design.
And then you have that amazing sparkling effect.
Yes, the creature has bioluminescence. Its face is very, very complex, and it can look intelligent, angry, sad, because it has sculptural details that go against painted details. And then you have Doug [Jones] acting on top of that.
The creature is a mixture of digital and make-up, but most of it is make-up. In some instances, we overlay the blinking of the eyes, and some of the forehead and some of the lips and some of the jaw and so forth, so that it’s a constant seamless blending between physical effects and digital effects.
What attracts you about horror, monsters, and fairy tales?
I’m attracted to the visuals of horror, but not the mechanics. I’m interested in the mechanics of fairy tale with the visuals of horror, because I think they’re very similar. Hansel and Gretel is basically a horror story; the original Cinderella is a horror story, so is Little Red Riding
Hood and so forth. I think that horror and the fairy tale walk hand in hand. When I produce, I like to scare people – I like things like The Orphanage or Mama; but as a director, the scares are the thing that interest me the least. I get very bored with it.
What happened to your project? Frankenstein
It will happen one day, but it’s a very big endeavour. I would like to do it long – four to six hours – so maybe for TV.
Will it be connected to the Dark Universe?
No. I was at some point going to do it, because it was going to be about the classic monsters, but Universal have a very strong idea of what they want now, and I’m interested in the classic monsters.
What’s coming after The Shape of Water?
We’re doing Fantastic Voyage with Fox, but I don’t know for sure. That’s what it’s looking like now. We’re continuing with
Trollhunters, and then after that I don’t know…