Wins by ‘Shape of Water’ at Oscars powered by ‘love’
How did “The Shape of Water,” a movie about a mute cleaning woman falling in love with a fish-man, wind up winning the Oscar for best picture?
It starts with the power of love, according to the film’s Oscar-winning director, Guillermo del Toro.
“Love is much stronger than hatred, and it’s much more powerful than fear,” Del Toro told The Times in a November interview. “Love is the antidote to what we’re living through today.”
That timely resonance helped “The Shape of Water” become the first sci-fi film to win best picture.
Del Toro explained that “The Shape of Water” is set in 1962 “for a reason. Because it’s about today. And about the ‘other’ … I wanted to talk about things now.”
“Shape’s” favor with the academy — it earned a leading 13 nominations, winning four — was also helped by the way it explored societal fears of the Other.
“It’s set in 1962, but, for me, this is today,” the Mexican-born Del Toro said. Pointing to the movie’s Cold War era, he added: “When people say, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ they’re dreaming of that time. Everything was great if you were white Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. If you were anything else, you were (screwed). So it’s a false memory of that time.”
The film’s across-the-board support in the industry — it won top prizes from the Producers Guild and Directors Guild as well — was also probably aided by its baked-in love for cinema. Its main characters live above a beautiful movie theater, and the sound from the venue’s showings bleeds into the action, making cinema a constant presence as it is in Del Toro’s life.
Del Toro shot “Shape” like a musical, constantly moving the camera on cranes and dollies, aiming for the illusion that the characters might break into song at any moment. He also included a dream dance sequence that would have made Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers proud.
Del Toro used a great many B-movie tropes in “Shape” but took the film to surprising places as well. Its beauty-and-the-beast tale is a love story about understanding, not transformation. The lovers’ passion is reciprocal and almost immediate. The roadblocks come from outside forces.
And perhaps the biggest surprise of all: Sally Hawkins’ janitor drives the action and has to save the day.
That’s more unusual at the Academy Awards than you think: “The Shape of Water” was the first movie with a female protagonist to win the Oscar for best picture since “Million Dollar Baby” did in 2004.
Hawkins said she thought her character resonated in this #MeToo year in which women spoke out forcefully against sexual harassment and gender inequity in the industry.
“We need to see more women like her driving movies,” Hawkins said of her character.