Beautifully Unique

Rating: 9/10 (2 June 2018)

'The Shape of Water' is a beautiful unique love tale, that is delivered with a stellar performance by Sally Hawkins and fantastic direction by Guillermo del Toro. It's difficult to pinpoint my favourite aspect of this film, because it's wonderful in almost every way. To start off with, Sally Hawkins Oscar-nominated performance is worthy of all it's praise as she brings her peculiar, yet likeable character to life effortlessly. Playing a mute character who falls in love with a creature is a fairly difficult task to handle, but Hawkins pulls it off flawlessly, while also being backed up by great performances by Michael Shannon and Michael Stuhlbarg. While I did enjoy Octavia Spencer in this film, I am quite surprised by her Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as her character was a little too reminiscent of her character in the film 'The Help' and was rather stereotypical. Still love her though. Additionally, Doug Jones is obviously unrecognisable in this film as the Amphibian Man, but certainly deserves recognition for his fantastic and heartbreaking performance of the creature. Del Toro's direction in this film is once again, fantastic. While it certainly wasn't a surprise that the direction in this film was going to be good, given the critical acclaim it has received as well as the fact that it is Guillermo del Toro, it was obviously reassuring to see how beautiful Del Toro made this film. His direction, accompanied by the gorgeous cinematography by Dan Laustsen, makes this film a visual delight. But what really visually stands out is the creature this film is based around. The costume design and makeup make are outstanding, as the creature is so intriguing and rather beautiful. It would be something you'd gaze at for hours at an aquarium, and thus it was captivating every time the creature was in a scene. The plot of the film was nothing to complain about, with just enough plot twists and surprises to keep it from being clichéd and a rehash of other monster/romance films. Lastly, the music in this film is worthy of mention; the score by Alexandre Desplat and the selection of 1960's music mix beautifully into the atmosphere of the film. In saying all this, this film is a delight in almost every way and is certainly well deserving of it's 13 nominations, including Best Picture.