The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: The Shape of Water (2017), directed by Guillermo del Toro

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "La Javanaise", by Madeleine Peyroux

       Guillermo del Toro has finally ‘made it’. After a decade or two in the world of film, building for himself a finely-crafted cinematic universe of the magically macabre, the man reached the mountain top and managed to snag not just one Oscar but two, for Best Picture and Best Director. Whether or not the Academy Awards mean anything is a matter of opinion, but it’s still quite the accomplishment considering their general disdain for weird/genre films. I mean none of the directors that are beloved around here have seen Oscar gold aside from the Coens and Terry Gilliam once, and that was just for Best Supporting Actress, so at the very least it’s pretty unique for this blog. It makes you wonder though, or at least it made me wonder, just what was it about that year, that film, that finally made Hollywood stand up at take notice? What is it that makes The Shape of Water an Academy Award winning film? Does it deserve a spot in the final 10, even though it arguably doesn’t follow the theme? 

And then here we are.

Once upon a time, 1962 to be exact, in a city that’s perhaps  quite similar to your own, there lived a woman named Eliza Despacito (Sally Hawkins). Eliza lived a quiet life, and that wasn’t just because she was mute. For quite a while now she had gained an overwhelming sense of the routine. She ate the same food, had the same interactions, and always arrived at the same time every day to do the same job, which happened to be cleaning at a government testing facility. Life certainly wasn’t bad per se, she had good friends to keep her company, but Eliza was certain there was something missing, something new and unexpected that would push her out of the perpetual rut that she found herself in. But where could such a transformational spark be?

Then one day, a government agent named Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrived at the facility with mysterious cargo dubbed ‘The Asset’. This ‘Asset’ turns out to be a living thing, an amphibious humanoid revered as a god in a remote South American tribe that was captured/kidnapped and brought to the States. While cleaning up after a rather gruesome accident involving missing fingers and a lot of blood Eliza meets the Asset and, after several such meetings, discovers that it, or rather he, is capable of communication and forms a bond with him. Upon learning that Strickland plans to have Asset cut open and studied, Eliza decides she’s gonna help him escape. The problem is, how exactly are you supposed to bust a 7 foot tall fishman out of a guarded government facility, and what are you supposed to do with him once you get him out? Besides falling in love with him I mean.

Well, if anyone was going to do a version of The Creature from the Black Lagoon where the woman was super into it, it was going to be Guillermo del Toro. He was also probably the best person for the job, precisely because he’s a huge weirdo. When del Toro decides he’s going to be bringing the Gill-Man into the 21st century (unofficially), then by god he’s going to look like a fish man. It doesn’t matter if he’s some bizarre monster who speaks in clicks and shrieks and has a hunger for house pets, and sure he can’t live outside of water for very long, but he’s our love interest! Sparkling vampires and werewolves are for amateurs folks, del Toro is only interested in hardcore romance stories. Unless it looks like it could be related to The Predator, it ain’t worth his time.

That’s Doug Jones as 21st Century Gill-Man by the way. You might remember him as the body actor for Abe Sapien in del Toro’s Hellboy films, where he played pretty much the exact same character. Which is fine, because he’s obviously very talented, and I imagine the underwater love scenes had a lot to do with pushing Shape of Water into the proverbial winner’s circle. That and the gratuitous Michael Shannon.

Speaking of those love scenes, Shape of Water is yet another example of del Toro’s dedication to aesthetics. Much like fellow ‘dark fantasy’ director Tim Burton, and to a lesser extent the team of Jeunet and Caro, del Toro manages to create that is gloomier than our own and yet somehow more vibrant. The world of Shape of Water is one of flux, the last gasp of Mad Men before this tidal wave of change comes rolling in, and that is what del Toro presents to us visually. Art Deco in decline, where the vivid colors only serve to show the dirt and age. It’s as if the city itself were a dark ocean, and every once in a while a glimmer would appear from beneath the surface. It’s a level of detail that can easily go south if you let your interest in visuals overshadow the narrative, and it’s something that I think del Toro struggles with even in this film. Take Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets for example, which in the interests of fairness I have only heard about and not personally seen: A marvelous looking film to be sure, but lacking enough substance to truly resonate with an audience.

The Shape of Water is a romance movie, and like all romance movies it’s about love. Love is the most important thing, if you don’t have love then your life has no meaning, and so on. Eliza’s life is dull and unfulfilling until she finds love. Giles the neighbor is gay, something which 1962 America is not fond of, and so he retreats into an idealized illusion of the past. Strickland is incapable of love, so he’s a massive piece of shit. That all is fine, but where I run into is that the romance the movie is based around feels ephemeral at best. We are meant to assume that Eliza and the Gill-man have built up this relationship, and yet in that two hour time span (which feels longer) I remain unconvinced. Hell, I don’t think Guillermo makes a strong case that Gill-man is sapient, considering everything he does in the film. Sure he communicates occasionally through very basic sign language, but Koko the gorilla could do that as well, and they max out around a fifth-grade child’s level of cognition. It comes across less like ‘Beauty & The Beast for a new age’ and more like ‘lonely woman uses animals to get her rocks off’, which doesn’t exactly carry the same emotional resonance. In fact it might even come across as a bit insulting, if the intent was to liken Eliza’s issues with Gill-man with the homophobic bigotry that Giles deals with at one point in the film. I don’t know if the LGBTQ community would want their relationships equated with what could be bestiality. Or maybe I’m reading too much into what is essentially a simple premise, which is that del Toro wanted to make a movie where a woman had sex with a monster, and he did it. Everything else is just window dressing to distract you from thinking too hard about it. Love is blind, and should be too.

Of course the question that remains is whether Guillermo del Toro deserves those Oscars for The Shape of Water, and the answer that comes to mind is ‘I guess so’. Thing is, Guillermo hasn’t really changed in all these years; since 1993 he’s been making films that looked great, were casted well, and were occasionally hit-or-miss in the storytelling department. If you liked Cronos then it’s a pretty straight line to The Shape of Water. Perhaps it was that because it was a simple premise, the modern day fairy tale, that allowed one to relax and really take in Guillermo’s strongest skill. I dunno, but it was enough to sway the Academy judges that day, and maybe it’ll sway you too. Despite the issues I have with it, The Shape of Water manages to get with the recommendation. Halloween might not be the holiday for romance, but maybe it could be with this film in your queue. Unless that love is directed towards cats, in which case you might just want to look somewhere else.