Sublime cinematic fare

Rating: 10/10 (29 June 2019)

How incredibly sad that almost every user rating The Shape of Water on IMDB seems to have totally missed what the nature of the film is. It is a cross between a fairy tale, that much loved genre of del Toro, and homage to the ability of cinema both to express such fairy tales and to enhance the life of our imagination by doing so. It is a hugely metacinematic and intertextual exercise, with every scene and every theme alluding to something from the history of cinema, the black and white scene where the mute Eliza breaks into song and dance with the "asset" being the culmination of such cinematic homage. The movie is not literal, and a literal reading of it is puerile and dishonest. In cinematic story telling anything is possible: two loners like Eliza and Giles can share genuine friendship and a household. Dimitri the evil Russian is the one who appreciates and wants to save the "asset", the almighty all American power guy Strickland rots away at the severed and surgically reattached fingers, while the "asset", far from being a monster from the black lagoon, is actually a healer. And the marks on Elisa's neck since childhood are nothing other than a suggestion of her true destiny, to develop gills and live happily ever after in her water world with the "asset". There's a million other images I could go into. The colour green/teal distinction, the ever presence of water in every form, the contrast between little people like the cleaning women and the powerful men they work for etc etc. Go watch this movie with your heart open and your prejudices at bay. Let a little of the sublime in it spill over into your life. Off to watch it again.