2017 | 2hr 3mins | Drama, Fantasy | Rated 15 | Dir. Guillermo del Toro
It has been three years since Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) emerged onto cinema’s screens and three years until I finally chose to watch this ‘acclaimed’ Golden Lion winning masterpiece. What took me so long, is a question that plagues me even as I write this, for del Toro had created a spectacle of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale and what emerges is a film that has defied any categorisation by genre. Instead, we are swept into a land of paradoxes.
This motif has followed del Toro across his filmography, because he blends realism with fantasy. It is through this sleight of hand, done with subtly, that we barely notice the city of Baltimore, USA, set somewhere in the 1960s, is not a true depiction of the post-war American experience that it first seems.
The Shape of Water has a layering of a romance, thriller, drama and fantasy which should have been stifling for a viewer to watch yet, del Toro turns each of these tropes on its head. So, by splattering in the violence that thriller’s offer and combining this with love, sex and, monsters what emerges is a violent love story. However, when we dive deeper, we begin to understand that del Toro’s portrayal of a ‘monster’ and a woman falling in love is in actual fact a tangled exploration of what it means to live in a world which denies you a place and, more importantly, a voice.
Viewers first notice this absence of a voice through its leading heroine Elisa (played by Sally Hawkins). Elisa is a mute, communicating via sign-language, her speech shown on the screen through vivid yellow subtitles. Her reality is filled with people, their noise and the space they occupy within her world. But, she is lonely. It is through this loneliness that the need for her to feel accepted by someone other than her peers becomes recognisable. She is desperate for connection and as the film progresses, for love too. This is why the relationship between the ‘monster’ (Creature) and Elisa is paramount to the understanding of del Toro’s masterpiece. The relationship grows by intrigue first. Elisa initially notices the Creature in passing. She and her best friend and colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer) are completing their routine cleaning of the secret scientific facility they work at. It is inside one of the laboratories that Elisa first notices the Creature. Much like Elisa, a viewer is intrigued due to the way del Toro has filmed the scene. The camera moves almost like a body through water, always shooting from below or in the centre of the screen – never from above. As the Creature is brought into the science lab, we notice the way the camera circles around all cast members, gliding between them and focusing on the face of the laboratory’s head of security, who is attempting to command the room with his voice. As we watch, the camera tracks the movements of those individuals important to the scene: Fleming (David Hewlett), Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), Elisa and Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). However, the camera is always moving much like a body, a creature, would if they were swimming through the sea.
Nevertheless, as the scene continues Elisa is swept up by her intrigue. As she approaches the Creature, she hovers her hand across the tank he is imprisoned in and listens to his muffled cries. Not only does this leave a viewer deeply empathetic towards the Creature it also echoes the sentiment of entrapment both he and Elisa feel in their respective circumstances. This sense of entrapment is then made overtly apparent to a viewer when she touches the tank. When Elisa presses her hand against the glass the Creature’s cries increase and fill the laboratory. This alerts the lab staff who promptly remove her and Zelda from the room. Despite this, Elisa is then left with the echoes of the creature’s fear. Much like him, Elisa longs to cry out. She is isolated in a world of noise because she cannot communicate through sound, only movement. It is this difference that makes her appear weak to those who populate her world but, Del Toro teaches us that there is strength in difference. We merely need to look.
Overall, The Shape of Water feels like a film of indulgence. It is a delicious ride into something forbidden and haunting but, ultimately, beautiful. Once again, del Toro has triumphed in his vision to combine the fantastical with what is real, leaving a viewer with heightened emotions of longing and compassion because we are made to realise what is left unspoken, in the silence, is just as powerful as the noise that surrounds our daily lives. All we need is to be still in the silence to understand the beauty that the world offers.
- Megan Brady
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