Love: the Universal Language

Rating: 7/10 (4 February 2018)

We all crave for love and care. The exchange of those emotions with our world around keeps us going. The humanity finds new outlets when the existing ones don't give way to release and expression. In right circumstances, love finds new faces and, in some other, it subtly devolves into a disease. Guillermo del Toro preens those faces up beautifully in his novel imagination, The Shape of Water.
The movie is set up in the cold world era, with visible contempt for certain skin colour and race à la hierarchical structure and caste divide in India of the same period. Evidently, getting ahead at all cost was starting to get common at that time in the US-even at the cost of values and human relationship. In such an environment what chance does a mute janitor has other than to be grateful for the small mercies of the world? She sure has a company with an old man, Giles, her neighbour, whose services are no more needed by his employer. His paintings don't find a place in a rapidly moving world that values usefulness over subtlety. Guillermo aptly portrays two people living with compatible loneliness. Even more apt for 2010s than 1970s!
Despite of all this darkness, love and care floats like a cuckoo's constant humming in the story. Elisa's care for her cats, movie theatre owner's compassionate behaviour towards his protagonist tenants, Zelda holding the line for Elisa and finally Elisa's care for humanoid amphibious creature are like many threads that weave a beautiful colour across a piece of muslin. The story isn't a first of its kind. There are many movies depicting an animal falling in love with a human (King Kong, Shrek, etc.). Considering many may not prefer to watch such a love story, treading that path and keeping the audience hooked and to make them appreciate the evolution of emotions is not easy, but Guillermo does it with conviction.
Most of the characters round up well as the story progresses. Being a female, an orphan and a janitor with not many around having the time and patience to 'listen' to her gestures, she tends to herself. Her sexuality woven into her daily routine is shown in a bland yet beautiful way and highlight her lonely world. Guillermo must be appreciated for picturising that non-judgementally. Her coming to find an expression in the creature appears natural. Now, juxtapose Giles' refusing to understand Elisa's anxiously exaggerated gestures against the creature using the same gestures to express its love for her. That's the movie's high point.
Zelda with her skin colour and Giles with his sexual orientation similarly crave for a caring company. As an oddity, Colonel Richard Strickland's character does not evolve as the story advances. His motive to win at all cost is not well explained except that a threat to his survival finally made him even darker.
The way the scientist Robert Hoffstetle (a soviet spy in disguise who is constantly threatened by the ruthlessness of both Colonel Richard Strickland and Hoffstetle's soviet handlers) helps to save the amphibian shows how an attempt to understand can bring compassion and love. In contrast, Colonel Strickland's desire to win at all cost harbours ruthless pragmatism at the cost of those emotions.
The movie's climax is a bit routine and thus disappointing. It develops suddenly ending in a bland win of good over evil.
Even if one doesn't relate to a lady falling for an animal, the true appreciation of the subtlety of human emotions and values is what makes the movie watchable. A commendable piece of art.
~ Himanshu Trivedi