dir. Guillermo del Toro
One of the many joys of watching a Guillermo del Toro film is that you never know what tone, style or feel that his visionary eye will show you. He has a penchant for taking the genres he grew up on and making it even more relevant for today's audiences but with his latest masterwork he has certainly outdone himself as he's managed to make a romantic fable about a mute woman who falls for a mysterious amphibian creature into a universal cinematic masterwork about tolerance, societal norms, and most important of all, acceptance.
Set during the early 60s, we follow Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman who lives her life above a movie theater and goes about her mundane routine working at governmental facility. She has her two best friends (Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer) and her usual day to day activities which bring her peace but her heart still longs for more. She encounters a mysterious creature (Doug Jones) whom she connects with and has to protect from the government agent (Michael Shannon) who only sees the creature as an "asset".
If the story sounds a bit familiar, that is because it draws a lot from fairy-tale fables like Beauty And The Beast and Cinderella albeit on a more graphic and adult level than a certain mouse house. Del Toro also uses a lot of other genre and filmic stylings but that has always been his strength as he doesn't directly copy or pastiche like some other filmmakers have done recently and in the past.It's almost as if he took the mold of a Universal Monsters movie and crossed it with French New Wave and Old School Hollywood genres. His directing also manages to bring some amazing performances from not only the leads but also the supporting characters as well and all of whom get equal screen time and have their own motivations and stories.
From the screenplay to the cinematography to Alexandre Desplat's orchestral score, everything flows and nothing feels like it doesn't fit with the characters or story. The Shape Of Water is a fantastically beautiful and haunting cinematic celebration of fantasy, romance, fables and the stuff that we dream when we are younger. It has a lot of graphic moments but in the end, it's a grown up fairy tale that speaks to us all.
The Shape of Water is Rated R for Sexual Content, Graphic Nudity,
Violence and Language
Violence and Language
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