One Scene Can Define a Film

Rating: 10/10 (17 May 2018)

From the two minute scene in Up that defined and set the whole film, to the many mini movies of Forest Gump that pulled on your heart stings, the poetry of one scene can take a mundane film to an endless memory.
Although this film did not meet the dizzy heights of Pans Labyrinth, the Shape of Water's final scene rapped up it's narrative in splendid and glory:
Unable to perceive the shape of You.
I find you all around me.
Your presence fills my eyes with Your love.
It humbles my heart,
For you are everywhere
The central focus of this film for me was not the romance between the 'Creature from the Blue Lagoon' and our heroine , but the conversation of what love is between the excellent leads of Sally Hawkins and Richard Jenkins. They are both outcasts in a society that has rejected them and they are desperate to connect to another. At first, their friendship and intimacy made me think that they were blood related, yet the story excellently depicts that they are lost souls joint in a cause, to loose their shackles of nialism in the love of another. Richard Jenkins becomes besotted with a young man in a cafe only to find that when the curtains are pulled down, he is left with false promise This is where the ending plays as he comments on the joy that his friend finally found what they both so badly craved for, even if it was with a merman from the deep.
A lot of people sniggered at the 'bathtub scene' where the two characters made love, yet the scene is validated with the presence of Richard Jenkins 'Giles' to acknowledge that although some people may mock the romance that his dearest friend has, he knows it to be true for her.
I was not moved until the final scene played and then I felt the hope of love that they bonded over to make such a beautiful friendship. Perfectly flawed, yet perfectly perfound!