A Review of the Movie Wind the Shape Water

In James Whale's 1935 moving picture "The Bride of Frankenstein," the monster (Boris Karloff) says mournfully, "Alone: bad. Friend: proficient!" That's what Guillermo del Toro's latest film "The Shape of Water" is all about, the loneliness of those built-in before their time, born different. "The Shape of Water" doesn't cohere into the fairy tale promised by the dreamy opening. Information technology makes its points with a jackhammer, wielding symbols in blaring neon. The mood of swooning romanticism is silly or moving, depending on your perspective. (I found it to be both.) The film starts in a wavering green underwater world, with a woman floating in what looks like a drowned Atlantis. The epitome is otherworldly, magical, and Alexandre Desplat's score is wistful and bittersweet. Richard Jenkins narrates, asking helplessly, "If I spoke about it, what would I tell you" about what happened to the "princess without a phonation"?

The "princess without a vox" turns out to exist the mute Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who mops floors in the cavernous surreptitious tunnels of a Baltimore-based corporation (the word OCCAM—as in razor?—in towering letters over the entrance). Working aslope Elisa is Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who provides constant running commentary through the day, responding to Elisa's sign linguistic communication with a torrent of words. The yr is 1962, the background is the infinite race and the Cold State of war. The head honcho at the company is a sadist racist named Strickland (Michael Shannon), who swaggers around conveying a cattle prod (which he calls an "Alabama howdee-do"). Whatever is done at the corporation is elevation secret, and anybody is paranoid about the Russians, especially once "The Asset" arrives in a portable tank. The Nugget is the Amphibian Man (Doug Jones), discovered in the Amazon, once worshiped as a god and at present contained in a tank, enduring occasional torture via Strickland's howdee-practise. The scientist Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) pleads for mercy on the creature'due south behalf. The Amphibian Man should be studied, not destroyed.

Meanwhile, Elisa is drawn to the "monster," and begins a secret campaign to gain his trust. She offers him hard-boiled eggs. She plays him Benny Goodman records. She teaches him sign linguistic communication. The courtship sequence is the most successful in the film, calling to mind the stunning first half of "The Black Stallion" when the shipwrecked boy attempts to tame the wild horse, or the early on sequences of "E.T." when the child and the alien start to communicate. Monster motion-picture show references abound throughout "Shape of Water": "King Kong," "Brute from the Black Lagoon," "Starman," and—about of all—Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Creature," with i scene in detail an explicit homage.

Production designer Paul D. Austerberry has a field 24-hour interval, creating multiple atmospherically rich worlds, then existent you can smell the dank rot in those basement corridors. Elisa'south apartment is green-tinted, with light-green bath tiles, light-green water in the tub. (Light-green, equally nosotros are told multiple times in different contexts, is "the time to come.") Even more symbolically, her apartment hovers over a huge motion-picture show palace, and she lives among the echoes of the fantasy world below. Strickland'southward suburban home is a psychotic "Mad Men" set, so yellowy-bright it'south clearly not "the hereafter" only the delusional conceited by. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen creates a clammy wet mood, windows streaming and swirling with raindrops, shadows wavering on the walls, the overall feeling beingness submersion into the underwater world of The Asset. The film looks like a dream.

Elisa teeters on the edge of being "twee," and there are moments when Hawkins crosses the line into cocky-consciously ambrosial spunkiness. When she stares starry-eyed at a pair of red shoes (i.east. scarlet slippers) circumvoluted in a shop window, it's really pouring it on a chip also thick. What'due south refreshing about the character is her backbone and resourcefulness, and her brisk thing-of-fact attitude nigh her sexual needs. (She masturbates every morning after setting an egg timer and then she doesn't become backside schedule). She looks at Amphibian Man—his nictitating membrane, his 12-pack abs, the Ken Doll mound between his legs—overwhelmed past allure. She confides in Giles, her gay neighbor (Richard Jenkins, in the best functioning in the film) who is tormented by unrequited love for a young guy who works at a diner. Giles' television is always tuned to old movies, so he can revel in Betty Grable, Alice Faye, Bojangles and Shirley Temple tap dancing upwards a stairway.

"The Shape of H2o" shows over and over over again the demonizing of the "Other," the heartlessness of denying living creatures dignity. The moving-picture show is on sure footing when it's focusing on the brutal treatment of the monster, the "voicelessness" of Elisa, the alone pre-Stonewall gay homo. They all come from "the future," earlier their fourth dimension. Simply when the film portrays contemporary real-life events—the African-American couple told they tin can't sit at the counter, Strickland'due south racist comments to Zelda, the news footage of fire hoses turned on bodily civil rights marchers—the fragile fabric of the film is broken. At that place's something unsettling virtually using these things every bit "atmosphere," even as the moments dovetail with the overall theme. At its worst, using these real-life events feels like a autograph, a as well-obvious pointing out of the similarities between the real world and the fairy tale, in case nosotros didn't go information technology.

As Elisa, Giles, and Zelda team up to try to save the Monster, the motion-picture show jerks away from the single-minded energy of the dreamlike courtship sequence. The second one-half of the film—choppily episodic, drawn-out—is noticeably weaker than the beginning one-half. The film feels much longer than information technology is. There are elements that work beautifully and elements that don't work at all.

A adept artist doesn't necessarily set out to please the audience. A good artist sets out to delight himself. Sometimes the two things merge, and in the best of del Toro's films, they practise. His is an enthusiastic and passionate mind. The devotion of an artist—whether it's Leonardo da Vinci, The Troggs, John Cassavetes, Chantal Akerman, whoever—to what turns them on is communicable, and audiences feel it. In a corporate-run franchise-driven industry, del Toro's movies are refreshingly personal. All of this is true of "The Shape of Water," but still, something's off.