The Shape of Water

MOVIE TITLE: The Shape of Water

DIRECTOR: Guillermo Del Toro

YEAR: 2017

GENRE: Dark Fantasy Romance

RATING: R for sexual content, language, and violence

GRADE: Pass

During the Cold War in 1960’s America, Elisa Esposito is a lonely, mute janitor at a top secret military base whose only true friends in the world are a fellow janitor named Zelda and a gay advertising artist named Giles. Elisa finds additional friendship in the unlikeliest place when the military captures a South American merman and keeps him in captivity for the purpose of sending him into space. The more time Elisa spends with the merman, the more she identifies with him since they both communicate in strange ways and are both outcasts in their respective worlds. Her eventual plan is to break the sea creature out of captivity before he can be tortured any further for “scientific reasons”.

The fact that any movie can introduce a romantic plot to us without sounding like a shallow Harlequin romance novel is always impressive to me. As strange as it may seem, Elisa and the merman are perfect for each other. Nobody in the world understands them. Few people want to be within arm’s length of them. They may not be beautiful to the superficial population at large, but they’re beautiful to each other and that’s what true love is all about. They don’t need to argue with each other over stupid things. They don’t need to fight over pretentious jealousy. While those last two things are realistic in most relationships, they’re not found in this love story, because we all know at the end of the day such petty things are foolish anyways. Let this delightfully unique couple enjoy their moments together.

On the opposite end of the love spectrum, you have a vile and disgusting villain named Colonel Richard Strickland. As the chief bad guy, he’s believable in every sense of the word. His dialogue is slick and hard-boiled without dipping into bathos territory. His obsession with defeating the Russians in the space race will lead him to do and say horrible things to get what he wants. His methods of torture are brutal even by pre-Bush Administration standards. When he psychotically breaks down, you’d better run like you’ve got rocket fuel pouring out of your butt. Although, I don’t know how much good running will do considering he’s driving around in a smug teal Cadillac. The worst part about him? He’s in a position of power and can throw it around whenever he wants. If it wasn’t for all that power, he would have been taken out long before the movie even had the chance to start.

While this movie is deserving of all of its Academy Award nominations and victories, it’s not without flaws (at least for me). The opening exposition into the movie’s plot seemed a little slower than it had any right to be. The merman devouring an innocent kitty was disturbing as hell (I get that he’s a wild creature, but it knocks a few points down for him as a lover). Those two flaws may seem like small potatoes on the surface, but one series of scenes that sticks out to me is when Giles’s art is turned down by his boss and he’s banned from a pie café by the homophobic and racist owner. Before these two scenes happened, Elisa wanted to recruit Giles in breaking the merman free from the military base and he was adamantly against it. Now that Giles is friendless, only then does he want to get back in the good graces of Elisa. That’s like a high school kid who rejects his uncool friends in favor of the popular jocks, gets kicked out by said jocks, and then tries to get his uncool friends back. I know this series of scenes was necessary in Giles’s character development, but they still seemed a little suspect to me.

All in all, The Shape of Water is a cinematic masterpiece that earned all of its universal acclaim. The acting was spot-on. The plot was unique. The cinematography was breathtaking. And yes, there are sex scenes in this movie that are quite lovely, but that by no means makes The Shape of Water pornographic. These scenes have a purpose in developing characters and actually get us past their surface levels. If you get a chance to see this movie, do it. You’ll have no regrets and will have to dig deep to find flaws (like I did). How does a passing grade sound to everybody here?