The Shape of Water

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Fantasist filmmaker and author Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) tries his hand at a fairy tale and largely succeeds with poetic feeling. Though edged with darkness, The Shape of Water is predominantly sweet and is chiefly a “Beauty and the Beast” story about embracing the unusual and the power of Romance. If the narrative is quite predictable, it excels in its attention to Cold War period detail and the emotions of the protagonist. The compelling cinematography by Dan Lausten transforms the melodrama into a stirring graphic novel with accents of H.P. Lovecraft (specifically a pair of gangrene fingers).

Sally Hawkins is Eliza, a mute cleaning woman with a whimsical bent, who works at an aerospace research facility. Day in and day out, she punches the clock. Her only respite is spending time with her neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins) a kindly older gay man, struggling in his pursuits with commercial art illustration. The two live above a cinema.

One day Eliza sees something she should not have seen: an amphibious masculine being in a tank. Eliza only sees a webbed hand but she is instantly smitten.

The frequently villainous Michael Shannon plays Strickland, a square faced ultra-sadistic and repulsive man who brought the webbed being here from South America. The actor is superb playing someone so vile, although one might wish for a more ambiguous and arresting Bad Guy.

The crux of this merman story is the attraction of Eliza to the being (Doug Jones) and the desire for love. As influenced by Lovecraft, all is melancholic, green and underwater, even when the actors are above ground. Interior walls become damp and wet with peeling paint, office walls are an anemic industrial gray and pies are a sickly virulent emerald. Aside from Eliza, her fellow worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and Giles, this is a grim America in 1962 where people work and have no opinions.

Dimitri (Michael Stuhlbarg) has compassion as a Russian scientist but on the whole the film pictures an America experiencing a somber turn with even the charms of cinema largely ignored. The film can be read as a parable for our national Trumpian condition: Michael Shannon’s character is a violent sexist and racist man who actually says the now infamous word “shithole.” Fear not. We have two strong women who lead when the men cannot or do not. Eliza’s co-worker Zelda and Eliza herself.

Given these timely references it is difficult not to forgive a silly Rogers and Astaire interlude and be ultimately buoyed by The Shape of Water, which was awarded thirteen Oscar nominations. Albeit not as potent as Pan’s Labyrinth, this film is striking, quaint and arguably the most accessible of all del Toro’s works so far.

Write Ian at ianfree2@yahoo.com