Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival September 11,2017
Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival
a Guillermo del Toro film
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
Taking place during the Cold War, a mute girl named Elisa works as a cleaning lady at a high-security government building. The lab has a new asset and Elisa is curious to know what it is. It is an aquatic creature unlike anything she has ever seen before. Elisa spends a lot of time visiting the creature and the two share a bond. Elisa learns that the man in charge, Colonel Richard Strickland, is planing to kill the creature and tear him apart. With the help of one of the scientist, Dr. Robert Hoffstetler, and her friends, Zelda and Giles, Elisa breaks the creature out of lab and keeps him in her apartment.
Blaine: When Guillermo del Toro was eight he saw the film “Creature From the Black Lagoon” and he was expecting there to be a love story between a woman and a creature. It disappointed him that there was no love story. Decades later as a filmmaker he wrote a story that his eight year old self would have wanted to see about a woman falling in love with an aquatic creature. The reason why Guillermo del Toro set “The Shape of Water” during the Cold War was because back then fairy tales helped take children’s minds off of the tragedy that was going on. Guillermo did the same thing with “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” by having them take place during the Spanish Civil War.
The creature brings out the best in people like Elisa, Giles and Dr. Robert Hoffstetler. In the beginning Elisa goes through the same thing every day. She wakes up, plays with herself while taking a bath for pleasure, packs a lunch, cleans her shoes, takes a bus to work and just cleans up a government facility. But that all changes after she meets the creature and makes her life more exciting. Elisa treats the creature like someone and not a monster. She teaches him sign language because like her he can’t talk. He becomes that someone special in her life and she has strong feelings for him. Elisa is the only person in the lab who shows the creature kindness. Then she introduces him to Giles and they become a family to him. Elisa and the creature show a lot of love for each other and like holding each other a lot. That’s what makes “The Shape of Water” so romantic. Seeing them together feels like something special especially when Elisa fills up her bathroom with water and skinny dips with the creature.
Guillermo del Toro had described Elisa as someone who is otherworldly. Sally Hawkins felt like she knew her character, Elisa, after Guillermo del Toro gave her all the details of who she is. He even gave Sally a box of blu-rays of silent movies starring Harold Keaton, Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Elisa is able to express everything without a word through her facial expressions and her movement and Guillermo thought that Sally had that unique energy.
Giles is Elisa’s next door neighbor and she is always looking after him like he is her father. Elisa is the only friend he has who accepts him for what he is and is always kind to him. He’s an artist who can draw and paint really good, but the problem is the company he does posters and portraits for can’t seem to make up their minds of what they want. Giles doesn’t like having a bald spot on the top of his head. He’s also gay and it’s hard for him to find a nice guy especially in the time period he is living in. The first time Giles sees the creature he can not believe what he is seeing right in front of him and at the same time he thinks he is one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen in his life from an artist’s point of view. The creature has a beautiful figure which Giles loves to draw. Giles is also someone who forgives and he forgives the creature after eating one of his cats. The creature later learns that cats can be a gentle creature. The creature repays Giles for everything he has done for him by using his powers to give Giles the hair he wishes he had again. I also think of it as making it up to Giles for killing his cat.
Octavia Spencer had played characters in the 60s before in “The Help” and “Hidden Figures”, but none of them were like a fairy tale. Octavia’s character, Zelda, is like a big sister to Elisa, who is a very great supporter and looks after her at times like helping her punch on time for work. Zelda also wants what is best for Elisa. Guillermo loves how when Octavia looks at someone you feel like all your sins have been forgiven. Zelda also has a lot of strong opinions that she does not have a problem with.
Dr. Robert Hoffstetler works in the Government lab, but he’s really a Russian spy. Of course that doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy. Robert is more on the side of the creature and in a way he is his own person. He knows that the creature is one of God’s creatures and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if the creature was torn apart and dissected like a frog. Guillermo had admired Michael Stuhlbarg’s work for years and he knew that he could give this character a soul. Guillermo had written several pages to explain to Michael who Robert is. Robert’s a lot of things, a scientist, a Russian spy and a man with heart. Michael really liked going through those pages because it gave him all the details of how he should perform.
Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins and Michael Shannon didn’t have to audition for “The Shape of Water” because the parts they play Guillermo had written for them. Guillermo had seen these actors in other movies and he wrote parts that were suitable for them in “The Shape of Water". Each actor brought something unique into their performance and it’s mind blowing.
It took two years to find the right look for the aquatic creature and Guillermo del Toro spent his own budget on it. The first year they did a lot of designs through drawings and sculptures. Guillermo wanted the creature to look beautiful, perfect and innocent.
Guillermo had Doug Jones in mind for the creature because he is able to act behind the makeup beautifully. Doug had played 12 creatures for Guillermo and the creature in “The Shape of Water” was something new for Doug because he’s a romantic character. It took three hours a day to put that suit and all those prosthetics on Doug and it was heavy for him to wear. It would get heavier in the water because is would soak it up like a sponge. Octavia Spencer thought it was a gift to have an actor like Doug act with the actors in all that makeup instead of wearing a CGI suit. Guillermo always likes his creatures to be as real as they can be.
Doug Jones and Sally Hawkins spent a lot of time together weeks before principal photography began in order to get to know each other. By the time it came to shooting they had a trust and deep affection for each other.
Guillermo put so much into “The Shape of Water” including a musical number. Elisa is trying to sing the song “You Never Know” to the creature and then has this fantasy of her and the creature dancing while she sings the song and there is an orchestra playing in the background. It’s all in black and white. Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones worked on the choreography for three weeks. Guillermo wanted Sally to be leading the dance because it’s her fantasy.
There’s a lot great shots of the face being lit up thanks to the lighting. My favorite shot in “The Shape of Water” is when Elisa is on the bus after having a nice romantic evening with the creature and she is smiling slightly and she has one or two hands in front of her mouth. I like her pose in that shot and how the light hits her face. Everything around Elisa in that shot is a bluish tint and the sunset shinning on her and the red she is wearing is the only thing that is bright in that shot.
I also like the shot at the end where it shows the creature and Elisa getting really close and holding each other underwater and they turn into a silhouette. The tint of that shot is aquatic. Elisa has these scratches on both sides of her neck and you don’t know how she got them in the first place. But at the end you realize they are like gills and then the creature turns those scratches into gills so that Elisa can breathe underwater and the both of them can be with each other as lovers forever. “The Shape of Water” is Guillermo del Toro’s favorite film he has ever worked on. It was a project he had been wanting to do for a while, but he kept holding back because it was a personal project for him. It took nine movies that he made to convince himself to do “The Shape of Water”.
My rating on “The Shape of Water” is five out of five stars
