The Shape of Water -Thoughts
"Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, For You are everywhere."
Spoilers Ahead
Yesterday I went to the movies to see Guillermo del Toro's most recent film, the shape of water, and I can't help but write about how wonderful this film was.
The story was refreshing, a different take on a classic trope of impossible love, between a monster and a human, with a different approach from what one would expect. It gives a feeling of old classic movies, with everything from the camera angles to the colours used, setting the stage in America, leaving remnants of the cold war era and the race to space between Russia and the USA.
The story centres around the life of Elisa Esposito, a mute woman who works as janitor in a secret gubernamental facility in Baltimore, who out of loneliness and curiosity befriends an amphibian creature brought to be studied from South America. The creature, unable to speak, begins to learn sign language thanks to the time spent with Elisa, and soon they begin communicating and generating a unique bond of understanding between them.
The movie is what I believe to be one of the greatest stories told by Guillermo del Toro, creating a wonderful contrast of romance, thriller, history, fantasy, erotism, drama, and even adventure. It is hard to set the film into a single category, giving it what I would call a flexibility of it's own that would enthral anyone who decided to see the movie.
Every single character is surprisingly unique, helping not only the story to advance in it's plot, but also giving a feeling of the context in which the story unfolds, touching subjects such as disabilities, racial discrimination, homophobia, white privilege, and overall how society historically has tended to treat those who are different from the cookie cut image of normality.
It reminded me of other movies such as A Monster in Paris, in which mutual understanding because of a common feeling, such as loneliness develops an unlikely bond amongst two completely different and at first glance incompatible beings. Bringing to surface the sense of empathy, wonder, and a sense of amazement towards the differences rather than fear.
Somehow, the story makes the audience see the amphibian nameless creature as a him, rather than an it. Which in my opinion is an amazing achievement, seeing as people now a days have trouble even sharing that level of emotion amongst people of their same species.
The movie has an uncommon gentleness that is unlike anything we've seen from Guillermo del Toro before, still enveloped in a mysterious darkness and latent worry and yet extreme elegance as never seen before. A true masterpiece of current cinematography.