The Shape Of Water
By now I am sure we all know that the Shape of Water won the best picture award at the Oscars this year. I absolutely adore this film and was anxious that the Academy would commit its characteristic atrocities and give the award to a different film, thank goodness this was not the case. In addition, Guillermo Del Toro, the film’s director won the well-deserved best director award. Keeping that all in mind, let’s do the review!
The Shape of Water is a 2017 fantasy romance film by renowned director, Guillermo Del Toro. Set in the 1960s during cold war era America, the film follows Eliza (played by Sally Hawkins) a mute woman who works the night shift as a maid at a secretive government laboratory. When the Lab brings in a new specimen, a human-like amphibian man, Eliza falls in love with him and devises a plan to break him out of the facility with the help of her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her neighbor and best friend Giles (Richard Jenkins). Michael Shannon plays the sadistic and unstable head of the facility who will stop at nothing to ensure the doom of the amphibian man, and anyone who tries to get in his way. The film is set in the 1960s and almost a film noir-like atmosphere. The film has a rich lighting palette, made up of greens and blues that gives the charming fairy tale a mysterious yet vivid backdrop.
Those with an aversion to spoilers; proceed with extreme caution!
Right off the bat, I want to discuss the lighting palette that is used. From the very first shots of the film, the lighting had blueish and greenish tinting to it. Every shot looks almost like it’s wet or damp, especially scenes inside of Eliza’s apartment and in the facility where Eliza and Zelda work. In addition to this, the blue and green hues are reminiscent of the colors of the amphibian man. It is no coincidence that spaces that are frequented by Eliza are made to look more watery as it is implied several times throughout the film that in the water with the fish man is where Eliza truly belongs, and this is another way for that point to be made even more apparent.
Michael Shannon’s character, Richard Strickland, is another interesting feature of the film. He is unrelentingly cruel in his treatment of the fish man, torturing him for little more than Strickland’s own amusement, and ultimately deciding to kill the fish man under the guise of scientific research. Early in the film, the amphibious man and Strickland get into a conflict offscreen that results in Strickland losing one of his fingers, he has it reattached but throughout the course of the film the finger rots and blackens emits a putrid smell and begins to ooze a foul liquid. Strickland’s family is the pinnacle of 1960s suburban domesticity, he has two seemingly perfect children and a seemingly perfect buxom blonde housewife. He should have the perfect life but, once his finger begins to rot so does his mental state. I think that perhaps Strickland loves the pain of the finger. He is bored with the mundane activities that accompany a stable job and an enviable family and he seems to crave something more exciting. Strickland seems fascinated by the disgusting wound and even goes so far as to wipe his finger fluid on his wife’s face while they have intercourse. In one particularly repulsive and stomach-churning scene, Strickland removes the dead digit and once he does he seems to completely lose his mind and his obsession with finding the fish man culminates with the death of one of the characters and in the potential death of another (it is left ambiguous to the viewer). Strickland’s entire character arc is quite literally in the palm of his hand, or rather in the dead decaying flesh of his finger.
TL;DR: The Shape of Water is a fantastic film by director Guillermo Del Toro. It received the Best Picture and Best Director awards (and a few others) at the 2018 Academy Awards. I did this analysis a bit differently and focused on two more specific elements of the film, I did this so as to highlight a few of the fantastic and well thought out elements that make this film as amazing as it is. I highly recommend this film to fans of unconventional stories who can appreciate the beauty and look of a film as much as the content of the plot, because it is rare to come across a film that is so gorgeous and so expertly directed as this one.
(I just really love this poster, so I thought I’d sneak it in here somewhere.)
Did you see that? Did you hear that? 
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