Although I didn’t see this Best Picture winning film until after it had won 4 Oscars, as a fan of Guillermo de Toro’s past films, I thought I knew what I was getting into. A different take on the ‘monster movie’ with the non-monster characters trying to understand the creature instead of the usual running in terror. But this film is so much more.
Del Toro’s Hellboy franchise is among my favorites in the, now overbearing superhero genre because of how he humanized the ‘creature from Hell’ and his other powered allies throughout the two films. This trend in his films makes him among my favorite directors, and this film, in my opinion, his best. As someone familiar with his work, The Shape of Water seems like a product of learning from his previous work as evidenced by his unique and diverse characters.
These characters, contrary to other films featuring diversity, don’t seem like they are there to follow the ‘diversity trend’ in Hollywood now, where diverse characters are sometimes thrown into the background as an afterthought, which works in the film’s favor. The film’s protagonist, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), is a mute woman who falls in love with a ‘fish man’ (Doug Jones). With this being the central focus of the film upon its release, I didn’t find out about the other bits of diversity scattered throughout the film until I finally watched it. Elisa is accompanied on her journey of ‘love against the odds’ by her neighbor and friend Giles (Richard Jenkins), a gay man, and by Zelda (Octavia Spencer), a black woman, who is her best friend at her janitorial job. And since the film takes place in 1960s Baltimore, these characters add to enriching and adding layers to the story, rather than checking off boxes.
But perhaps my favorite part of The Shape of Water is the overall tone of the film. Shot and colored in low-key lighting with an array of greens and blues to add to the ambiance of the film, the whole 2 hours feel like a beautiful dream. Although it can be argued this was simply a stylistic choice, after all water is a major theme of the story, this blend of color adds a new character to the story, similarly to how cities can become characters in noir films. But these colors do not serve as a stylist choice to unite the film like director Wes Anderson is known to do, but rather builds on the sense of doom and loneliness that is present throughout the film. By styling the film in this way, the characters seem to blend into the ambiance that the coloring creates, leading viewers like me to believe that Elisa and the creature will not be together in the end either due to Strickland’s (Michael Shannon) interference or the Russian involvement, both evidenced by the narrative and overall style of the film.
However, much to my surprise, the duo do get their happy ending, of all places in the green/blue tone that surrounded and weighed down on them the entire film, but now the weight is replaced by the lightness and freedom that water brings the two, a significant upgrade form Elisa flooding her apartment for the same feeling on companionship earlier in the film.
