Movie Review: “The Shape of Water”
By Ron Kostar
The movie “The Shape of Water” is a testament to the power of love and magic in a willful, conflicted, overly pragmatic world.
Director Guillermo del Turo’s film is set in 1962 Baltimore, at the height of the Cold War. Agents for the US government have captured a magical hybrid (half man and half fish) somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest, and an evil agent named Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) has dragged him back to the States to see whether the amphibian could serve any practical purpose to NASA. Naturally, the Russians soon appear, wondering the same thing for their space program, and a struggle for control over the “asset” quickly heats up.
Neither the Americans nor the Russians are aware of, or care, whether the Amphibian Man has any notable human qualities, or in this case, super-human qualities. Leave this to the two heroes of the film: a mute custodian, Eliza (Sally Hawkins), who is a lively, likeable Chaplinesque young woman who works with her loquacious buddy Zelda (Octavia Spenser) cleaning the lab that houses Amphibian Man; and Giles (Richard Jenkins), Eliza’s best friend and neighbor, a gay painter who shares Eliza’s tenement building and generously opens his apartment.
Eliza and Giles are “little” people. Eliza is a mute custodian and Giles is a balding illustrator who has lost most of his work to photographers. Both are lonely and yearn to connect with people. In contrast, Strickland and the US Army General Hoyt (Nick Searcy) who is in charge of “assessing the potential of the asset,” are cold, pragmatic, and violent. From the start they are inclined to “liquidate the asset” and be done with the Amphibian Man.
Director del Turo’s view of Cold War America is not particularly favorable.
Strickland is a bundle of nervous tics and veiled threats and he seems to epitomize the ideological zeal and strident quest to acquire products and power of some post-WW 2 Americans. Strickland is “moving up”: he buys a teal Cadillac, a traditional symbol of success in the 60s, and he reads Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking; that is when he isn’t electro-shocking the Amphibian Man with his phallic baton or sexually harassing Eliza in the lab or alternately ignoring or dominating his Stepford-like wife at home.
Eliza comes in contact with the effervescent Amphibian Man while she’s cleaning the lab that houses the water tub in which he’s imprisoned. She dares to approach him despite his strange appearance, and she gains a certain degree of his trust by feeding him hardboiled eggs and playing him Benny Goodman albums. But more importantly, she teaches him to sign, and the more they communicate the more they bond; it soon becomes obvious they are physically attracted to one another.
When Eliza learns that General Hoyt and Strickland plan to kill her Amphibian Man, she convinces her friends Zelda and Giles and a renegade Russian scientist/double agent (Michael Stuhlbarg) to kidnap him and whoosh him to safety. What ensues is a heist followed by a lengthy, engaging chase scene, which concludes miraculously alongside a harbor, and in which Eliza and the Amphibian prove that sometimes love and magic can transcend even death. It’s a magical ending that is completely believable within the context of the movie.
*
“The Shape of Water” draws from Jean Cocteau’s Surrealist classic movie “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as from “Frankenstein” and “Cinderella” and other fairy tales. It also owes a debt to the Magic Realism of South American and Mexican novels. From the look of the movie, I suspect Director del Turo has watched plenty of American TV shows from the 50s and 60s, and that his viewing included episodes of “The Twilight Zone.”
The sets in the movie are memorable and worth mentioning. Giles’ well-lit apartment, where much of the movie takes place, is brimming with interesting art objects and Giles’ own paintings. It is a lively, creative place. (Giles also watches musicals from the 20s and 30s while he’s working and Eliza and Giles occasionally break out into impromptu song-and-dance routines.) In contrast, Strickland’s home is gaudy and garish and much too bright, like a room in “Mad Men” or “The Stepford Wives.” Eliza’s apartment is damp and green and it fits her like a glove. Visually, much of the movie looks as if it’s taking place under water; the fertile color green is everywhere and water is the film’s healing, transforming element. There’s a magic at work in “The Shape of Water” that hints of allegory, but the story is very much of this world and cultivates a sort of credibility.
“The Shape of Water” may not match last year’s two best movies, “Paterson” and “The Florida Project,” but it’s still wonderful and definitely worth seeing. I give it:
Four STARS ****
By Ron Kostar
The movie “The Shape of Water” is a testament to the power of love and magic in a willful, conflicted, overly pragmatic world.
Director Guillermo del Turo’s film is set in 1962 Baltimore, at the height of the Cold War. Agents for the US government have captured a magical hybrid (half man and half fish) somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest, and an evil agent named Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) has dragged him back to the States to see whether the amphibian could serve any practical purpose to NASA. Naturally, the Russians soon appear, wondering the same thing for their space program, and a struggle for control over the “asset” quickly heats up.
Neither the Americans nor the Russians are aware of, or care, whether the Amphibian Man has any notable human qualities, or in this case, super-human qualities. Leave this to the two heroes of the film: a mute custodian, Eliza (Sally Hawkins), who is a lively, likeable Chaplinesque young woman who works with her loquacious buddy Zelda (Octavia Spenser) cleaning the lab that houses Amphibian Man; and Giles (Richard Jenkins), Eliza’s best friend and neighbor, a gay painter who shares Eliza’s tenement building and generously opens his apartment.
Eliza and Giles are “little” people. Eliza is a mute custodian and Giles is a balding illustrator who has lost most of his work to photographers. Both are lonely and yearn to connect with people. In contrast, Strickland and the US Army General Hoyt (Nick Searcy) who is in charge of “assessing the potential of the asset,” are cold, pragmatic, and violent. From the start they are inclined to “liquidate the asset” and be done with the Amphibian Man.
Director del Turo’s view of Cold War America is not particularly favorable.
Strickland is a bundle of nervous tics and veiled threats and he seems to epitomize the ideological zeal and strident quest to acquire products and power of some post-WW 2 Americans. Strickland is “moving up”: he buys a teal Cadillac, a traditional symbol of success in the 60s, and he reads Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking; that is when he isn’t electro-shocking the Amphibian Man with his phallic baton or sexually harassing Eliza in the lab or alternately ignoring or dominating his Stepford-like wife at home.
Eliza comes in contact with the effervescent Amphibian Man while she’s cleaning the lab that houses the water tub in which he’s imprisoned. She dares to approach him despite his strange appearance, and she gains a certain degree of his trust by feeding him hardboiled eggs and playing him Benny Goodman albums. But more importantly, she teaches him to sign, and the more they communicate the more they bond; it soon becomes obvious they are physically attracted to one another.
When Eliza learns that General Hoyt and Strickland plan to kill her Amphibian Man, she convinces her friends Zelda and Giles and a renegade Russian scientist/double agent (Michael Stuhlbarg) to kidnap him and whoosh him to safety. What ensues is a heist followed by a lengthy, engaging chase scene, which concludes miraculously alongside a harbor, and in which Eliza and the Amphibian prove that sometimes love and magic can transcend even death. It’s a magical ending that is completely believable within the context of the movie.
*
“The Shape of Water” draws from Jean Cocteau’s Surrealist classic movie “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as from “Frankenstein” and “Cinderella” and other fairy tales. It also owes a debt to the Magic Realism of South American and Mexican novels. From the look of the movie, I suspect Director del Turo has watched plenty of American TV shows from the 50s and 60s, and that his viewing included episodes of “The Twilight Zone.”
The sets in the movie are memorable and worth mentioning. Giles’ well-lit apartment, where much of the movie takes place, is brimming with interesting art objects and Giles’ own paintings. It is a lively, creative place. (Giles also watches musicals from the 20s and 30s while he’s working and Eliza and Giles occasionally break out into impromptu song-and-dance routines.) In contrast, Strickland’s home is gaudy and garish and much too bright, like a room in “Mad Men” or “The Stepford Wives.” Eliza’s apartment is damp and green and it fits her like a glove. Visually, much of the movie looks as if it’s taking place under water; the fertile color green is everywhere and water is the film’s healing, transforming element. There’s a magic at work in “The Shape of Water” that hints of allegory, but the story is very much of this world and cultivates a sort of credibility.
“The Shape of Water” may not match last year’s two best movies, “Paterson” and “The Florida Project,” but it’s still wonderful and definitely worth seeing. I give it:
Four STARS ****