Del Toro At His Peak

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 2019)

Set in the year 1962, "The Shape of Water" is about a mute lady named Elisa Esposito, who works as a cleaning lady at a top secret laboratory run by the government in Washington D.C. Feeling that her life will never change for the better, she along with her colleague Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) find a horrendous looking amphibious humanoid held in captivity by the government authorities who want to dissect the creature, but Elisa begins to befriend the creature and makes it her mission to set it free.
Under the direction from Guillermo Del Toro, we see a rare fantasy story that's not set in mystical lands or some exaggerated place beyond our imagination, but set in our world just decades past. In a statement Del Toro said that this movie was one he felt very satisfied in making. Don't just take his words though, this movie received a plethora of awards including four Oscar wins.
The movie itself is the perfect combination of intriguing storytelling mixed with visuals that are vintage Del Toro and excellent performances by the ensemble cast. Plus we can't ignore the fact that everything that Del Toro does will likely be eccentric and enlightening.
Obviously inspired by classic monster movies and in this case, "The Creature from the Black Lagoon", from 1954, Del Toro had British actress Sally Hawkins in mind for the role as Eliza and Hawkins surely did not disappoint. Even though she plays a mute, she can still find ways to see the inner beauty of this creature who was subliminally brought to life by Doug Jones.
This film allows us to see some similarities between this and other fairy tales about princesses getting romantically linked with creatures that are not particularly human. Though Eliza is not blessed with royalty and the creature will not transform into a white knight on a steed. But Del Toro doesn't care about that he wants us to see how love should never be judged by its cover and that no matter how you look, love is for everyone.
Aside from Hawkins and Jones, they are joined by an eclectic diverse range of interesting characters both good an evil. We have Spencer who provides much needed comic relief as the only other friend of Eliza who acts as her sign language translator, and fellow cleaner, Zelda. We have Michael Stuhlbarg as Dimitri Mosenkov who's going incognito as Dr. Robert Hoffstetler who's a Russian spy secretly posing as a scientist to get enough information on the creature, and Elisa's other friend Giles (Richard Jenkins) her insecure neighbour who works as an advertising artist.
However, the real scene stealing performance comes from Michael Shannon as the tyrannical leader of this operation Col. Richard Strickland. His mission is to keep this creature in isolation and to make sure he's well disciplined. Even it means utilizing brutal ways like charging him with an electric cattle prod. Shannon takes great depth to make us despise this character that seems to take the pleasure to hurt the creature and fear those around him. What could have been a one dimensional villain character Del Toro who co-wrote the script with Vanessa Taylor gave Strickland a back story as to what caused him to be the way that he is.
The narration for "The Shape of Water" is backed up by Del Toro's colour choices and has an impressive soundtrack from Alexandre Desplat. The visuals are vibrant and stunning. Each scene has a similar visual vibe in some of his other films from the past like "Crimson Tide" or "Pan's Labyrinth".
The main colour for this flick is green which remains symbolic from Elisa's apparel to the key lime pie that Giles consumes, to the candy that Strickland eats, to the monster itself. In fact green is the omnipresent colour featured here, any other colours seems like an illusion.
A big shout out goes to the cinematography from Dan Laustsen, whose impressive visuals showed that this film was equal in both style and substance. It's these visuals complimented by this brilliant story that make this movie very magical and enticing.
Del Toro once spoke out to reporters that he was always curious about that real meaning of love. After seeing "The Shape of Water" and creating the right characters in the right atmosphere I firmly believe Del Toro answered his own question both stunningly and visually.