Best Picture winner is enchanting and spellbinding, yet too morally uncomplicated

Rating: 7/10 (5 March 2018)

'The Shape of Water' is an amazing, spellbinding romantic fairy tale, an empowering story of marginalized groups, and a crowd-pleasing tribute to the magic of cinema. Yet it fails to build up a compelling final act, and misses covering up plot holes, familiarity and lack of moral complexity.
Guillermo del Toro showcased his signature charm of combining spectacle, emotion, oddity and violence in the multi-Oscar-nominated film. The distinctive coloring and high contrast emphasized the masterful production design apt with the 1962 Cold War setting. Alexandre Desplat composed such a memorable piece of music, mixing the magic he made from his previous Harry Potter scores with French instrumentation.
Sally Hawkins as the mute Elisa was the overwhelming standout performance in the film. The way she can induce so much emotion even without a voice is such a marvel, and the scene where she was confronting Giles is just that kind of acting that will stick to you for a long time. Majority of the cast also provided well-rounded support, particularly Richard Jenkins as Giles, Octavia Spencer as Zelda, Michael Shannon as Colonel Strickland, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Dimitri. Other highlights included the vintage cinema scene, the egg sequences, the tearjerker black-and-white dance sequence reminiscent of 'La La Land,' and the amusing and elegantly-depicted love scenes between Elisa and the Amphibian Man. The nonverbal chemistry between the two leads helped the film divert from clichÃ©d romantic films and emphasize the profoundness of love. In this movie, the silence of love, even if you can't hear it, thundered through the viewers' heart. And although the film was a poignant love story in core, it also proved to be politically relevant, as portrayed in the representation of homosexuals, Black Americans, and the disabled in 1960s America.
The film, no matter how visually pitch-perfect, has its elements that might leave some audiences dissatisfied. Nick Searcy as General Hoyt gave a mediocre performance. Probably my biggest problem with the film are the questionable plot holes, the seeming familiarity of the plot, and the unsatisfying hollowness of the climax and ending. Del Toro chose to depict such small and clumsy final battle sequences. The plot was also very comparable to del Toro's most acclaimed work, 'Pan's Labyrinth,' which also had the same ending and a one-sided antagonist with no explained reason to be evil whatsoever. Del Toro had this polarization between good and evil in both films, which might be a too safe and unchallenging illustration of humanity and morality.
With its overwhelming Oscar win, 'The Shape of Water' is obviously the film which caters to the general appeal. It's poignantly enchanting, and it deserved the response it from The Academy.