THE SHAPE OF WATER

The Shape of Water (2017)

Rating: 8/10

STARRING: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Stuhlbarg

RATED R for language, nudity and sexual content, and violent material including bloody images and scenes of torture

The Shape of Water sniffs greatness, but it doesn’t quite reach it.

From the weird and often wonderful mind of Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak), The Shape of Water wants to be a lot of things. First and foremost, it is a tale of forbidden love, a deep connection that springs up between two beings of different species. The second most prominent and familiar aspect is that of a thriller, with themes of government secrets, paranoia, espionage, and military-sanctioned torture. It is also a study in loneliness, about individuals who feel different and disconnected from those around them for one reason or another. In addition, because the main characters live in an apartment above a movie theater and often watch or reference classic movies on TV, it’s clear there is a love letter to cinema packed in here, signed affectionately by Mr. del Toro. All these elements are interesting, and make for a full movie-going experience, but, for this reviewer, it was a little too much. The many plot strands allow for a number of effective characterizations (and the actors are terrific), but arguably the most important plot strand (and the movie’s main selling point), the cross-species romance, doesn’t get the time to truly develop against all this other material. Perhaps it would have been different in a longer movie, or in a film where the main romantic couple could, you know, talk to each other.

After all, the protagonist, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), is mute, the apparent victim of a childhood attack that left her with prominent scars on both sides of her throat. The object of her affection is a startling aquatic humanoid creature (Doug Jones, Mr. del Toro’s usual muse, under tons of makeup) who is the object of study in the secretive government lab in which Elisa works as a cleaning lady. When we first meet Elisa, she has a routine down pat. She sleeps through the day, wakes in the early evening to boil eggs, has some “adult quiet time” in the bath, picks out a favorite pair of shoes, and visits her neighbor Giles (a warm, wonderful Richard Jenkins), a gay artist who shares Elisa’s love of old cinema (the movie takes place in the 1960s). Elisa then takes a bus into work, where she meets up with the feisty Zelda (Octavia Spencer, supplying most of the film’s humor), who chatters away as the two scrub floors, toilets, and even, on occasion, the top-secret lab rooms. Elisa and Zelda are supervised by the smart, quiet Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who himself is overseen by the stone-faced, moody government spook Strickland (a reliably scary Michael Shannon). After an accident in which Strickland loses a few fingers, Elisa and Zelda are rushed in to clean up the mess. It is there that Elisa discovers the creature, whom Strickland claims to have discovered and captured in South America. The creature cannot speak, but it picks up some of Elisa’s sign language easily enough, and Elisa learns that they share a mutual love of eggs and music. But when Strickland gets orders to have the creature killed so it can be taken apart and studied, Elisa panics, and, with her friends, she begins devising a plan to have the creature freed in the ocean.

That might sound straightforward. That is a basic synopsis—it’s also the movie I thought I was going to get. But The Shape of Water is not just focused on Eliza, but breaks off to follow Giles, Strickland, and even Dr. Hoffstetler into their personal lives. Sometimes this is effective (such as in Giles’ repeated failed attempts at getting a painting published for an ad company, or Dr. Hoffstetler’s growing suspicion Russians are spying on him) and sometimes it is not (scenes of Strickland’s home life – including a cold and manufactured sex scene between him and his wife (Lauren Lee Smith) – add nothing to the film).  But it does detract from the romance at its center. Again, Elisa can’t speak, and neither can the creature. And (thankfully) Twilight this isn’t. We don’t get long scenes of characters staring into each other’s eyes or attempting to define their feelings. But we also get little build for Elisa is going out of her way to sneak into the high-tech lab safe-room to visit the creature, laying out eggs for its enjoyment, and even bringing her record player in to serenade it in its water tank. One wonders if the movie would have been more successful overall (given its many plot strands) if the connection between the two was not intended to be romantic but more of a kinship, simply a good-hearted desire to save it from government experimentation and exploitation. This would still have captured the audience’s interest and had us rooting for her to sneak the creature to safety before Strickland can kill it, but might not have raised expectations for us to feel something more. Similarly, the “love of cinema” aspect feels tacked on. Except for one luminous fantasy/dream sequence, the idea that Elisa lives above a movie theater adds nothing to the movie.

Still, the movie may only be missing a small handful of Elisa- and- creature-based scenes from being great. The creature is a gorgeous sight to behold (kudos to Jones for sitting through what must have been a marathon makeup job every day), and there are a couple other brilliant visuals.

The government/lab thriller works, Elisa’s relationship with Zelda works, and our peeks into the lives of Giles and Dr. Hoffstetler are effective. The movie is clearly not only a commentary on cross-species/forbidden lovers but also on different types of loneliness. Those who cannot speak are lonely. Those with an unrequited crush or a misunderstood sexual orientation are lonely. The wives of brooding, deadbeat husbands are lonely. It can even be hard being the one near the top of the food chain, when your life, reputation and even freedom are based on the whims of those above you. Again, kudos to all the actors for their heartfelt, lived-in work.

In Summary

The Shape of Water ranks near the top of Mexican writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s filmography, a film that juggles elements of a romance, a thriller, a multi-pronged character study and a love letter to film all in one. It feels like a bit too much – the romance, though admittedly hamstrung by the fact that neither partner can speak, didn’t quite inspire in me the feelings intended – but the movie still falls just short of being great. There are some stunning visuals, palpable tension, and terrific performances from half a dozen actors, a couple of whom will likely end up contenders for Academy Awards. This surrealist, borderline-fantasy is a hard R (unnecessary nudity and scenes of a nasty government agent taking a cattle-prod to a sensitive aquatic humanoid will do that), but it’s an intriguing film not just about a fantastical cross-species romance or height-of-the-Cold-War paranoia, but also a study in what means to be lonely, and be different, in a world where everybody else either fits in or pretends to. Mr. del Toro has made some interesting, genre-splicing films before (Hellboy, Pacific Rim, Pan’s Labyrinth), and this is one of his best.

The Shape of Water (2017)

Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor

Rated R

Length: 2 hours and 3 minutes