An imaginative piece of storytelling and a work of art

Rating: 9/10 (25 December 2017)

The Shape of Water is another fantasy-morality drama from Guillermo del Toro with the imagination and ambiguity of his Pan's Labyrinth, though with less engrossing storytelling. As a movie, I see it as a cross between Creature from the Black Lagoon and Splash with moral themes and compelling cinematic imagery.
The core plot is that a man-like, amphibian creature has been found in the Amazon basin and brought to the US for study in a government lab. The time is the mid 1960s and so the creature is a desirable "asset" for the US and Soviet governments in their Cold War contestings. Kept in a holding tank, the creature is treated as an animal until discovered by Eliza (Sally Hawkins), a mute janitor. Eliza, personally suppressed from her disability, finds sympathy with the creature's situation and forms a relationship with him. While she's supposed to be cleaning the lab, she feeds him eggs, plays music for him, and teaches him sign language. When the government authorities, represented by Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon), decide to kill and dissect the creature, Eliza and friends facilitate the creature's escape.
This central plot of "escape of an intelligent, sympathetic, fish creature who is loved by a human," struck me as the basic plot of the 1984 Tom Hanks comedy, Splash. The similarity extends to the creature's cruel confinement and unsympathetic study, and even to the shedding of its scales in misery. Now, Splash was a good movie and certainly not original in its genre. I don't fault del Toro for using a similar plot device to drive his movie because he took it beyond that device. Rather than just entertain us with a thriller storyline, he incorporates theme and imagery to say something.
The Shape of Water's central theme is a solid, Good vs Evil, extended to Misfits vs the Deluded Normal. Again, maybe not so original, but well done. The sets evoke the pre-digital 1960's with massive machinery and systems in a lab controlled by human technicians rather than computers. It all has a "dirty" look indicating that a large cleaning crew is required to keep it up. While that does stretch the believability of facility security (something innocuous in today's world) it is part of the fantasy and a needed plot device to put Eliza in proximity to the water creature.
The movie's look complements the Fantasy vs Reality theme that is also prevalent in Pan's Labyrinth. Here, it's seen as transitions between black-and-white and color scenes. In an opposite take on The Wizard of Oz, however, the fantasy scenes are the black-and-white ones, reflecting the fantasy depicted in the old musicals seen on the characters' TV sets. Even here, though, del Toro blurs the edges with a scene set in a movie theatre where The Story of Ruth is playing in bright Technicolor. So, with such changing cues, where do we find fantasy and reality? Maybe in people's actions, or maybe we can't.
There is also a religious theme that stems from the movie's consideration of Good vs Evil. We see a black-and-white view of God in Strickland's hubris where God is a white male human. Hence, in this view, the amphibian creature cannot be more than an animal (nor can people of color, represented here by Olivia Spencer's character). Playing against that, is the evoking of The Story of Ruth as a tempering Bible story where an autocratic God is not featured and the dominant theme is compassion.
As a master cinematographer of fables, del Toro uses his medium to depict his themes rather than pontificate with dialogue. Having his protagonists being a mute and a creature unable to speak underscores this and urges us to finding the proof of things with our own eyes. And so we see the Perfunctory vs Compassionate theme in the sex scenes (yes, this movie earns its R rating), and the delusion of Escape vs Reality in the TV broadcasts of musicals and Vietnam news footage.
Where the movie touched base with Creature from the Black Lagoon is in its depiction of the amphibian creature. Mr. del Toro chose to use an actor in costume for this character rather than CGI. That was a good move. Mr. del Toro's creature bears a resemblance to the Black Lagoon creature, even to the point of the webbed fingers with claws. Its "breathing" gills enforces that resemblance and allow the creature to be fearsome when required. Overall, though, he is depicted as another sympathetic and obvious misfit. Someone should win an award for this costuming.
While The Shape of Water is a fine example of movie-making, it has its flaws. It doesn't draw us into its characters as much as Pan's Labyrinth did. The evil is more institutional rather than personified (Michael Shannon's Strickland comes off as more crazy than evil, as opposed to "the Captain" in Pan's Labyrinth), so we don't feel the threat to the characters as much. Also, the ending felt "forced" and gratuitous. Still, what I did like about the ending, was its melding of the "happily ever after" ending of Splash with the ambiguity of Pan's Labyrinth.
The Shape of Water makes its mark in rising above the general fare of "blockbusters" offered by Hollywood. It is thoughtful with themes beautifully expressed in its visual medium. Those themes are classic in storytelling, but are progressive when compared to those in the current run of movies that seldom go beyond cliche and propaganda. I heartily recommend this film as an imaginative piece of storytelling and as a work of art.