formally perfect

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2018)

This is a movie that resonated with me as most of Del Toro's work does , and it is formally perfect. It takes aspects of horror, fantasy, romance, thriller, espionage, slavery, racism, period piece, and sci-fi and shakes them up to produce some kind of odd masterwork that will never be duplicated. The movie's cast works off each other perfectly, as everyone stands out together. The musical score and cinematography are just about perfect as well and take the best influences from the past and turn them into something new. The structure of the story is interesting, as most movies would stay with what happens in the first part of the movie for the majority of the film, but what normally be the climax (the big escape) scene actually happens in the middle of the film and the aftermath (the hunt for the creature) takes over and the movie becomes a mediation on the meaning of life. Shape of Water dares to explore every subject possible to explore in a move in 2 hours, and the fact that the dense nature of the movie does not implode under its own weight is.....a miracle. In that context, a woman falling in love with an Amazon fish-god makes perfect sense.