The Shape of Water (2017)

I view the Oscars about the same way I view the Grammys.  I don't watch either award ceremony due to length and not wanting to sit around watching speech after speech.  In some cases the Best Picture winner has been some obscure art or foreign film, but more often than not it is something not adventurous or out of the ordinary.  Rather, it is the lowest common denominator of pandering.  Producers and studios know, by and large, what wins Oscars, and they know how to gear movies to win them.  They are risk free pablum that is quickly forgotten. 

There are exceptions.  I was surprised when The Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture as movies of that type rarely even get nominated.  Same with Everything, Everywhere All at Once.  It is such an odd film, alternately imaginative and puerile, that one would imagine would leave the judges confused and frustrated.  That is why it was a shock that The Shape of Water won.  It's a monster movie, where instead of the monster being evil it gets involved in a relationship with a damsel that is not in distress.  It is another Guillermo del Toro movie that pretty much only works because he is the writer and director.  

Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute maintenance worker at a secret government facility.  She lives above a movie theater in Baltimore in 1962 across from her best friend, a commercial artist name Giles (Richard Jenkins) who is down on his luck.  She is also friends with her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who looks after her to make sure she doesn't lose her job.  One day while cleaning a new "asset" is brought in by a shady agent named Strickland (Michael Shannon), and Elisa becomes curious.  It turns out it is a humanoid amphibian (Doug Jones) that Strickland captured in the Amazon and brought back for study.

The reason they are interested is because the creature has a number of extraordinary abilities, many of which may lead to helping American win the space race.  That is why the Soviets are after it as well.  Both parties are happy to see the creature dead but, when Elisa finds out what is going to happen, she hatches a plan with Giles and Dr. Robert Hoffstetter (Michael Stuhlberg), a scientist ordered by Strickland to kill it, to steal it and release it back in the wild.  Along the way Elisa starts to develop feelings for the creature, which it turns out is quite intelligent and feels the same way about her.

The Shape of Water is heavily influenced by The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  The design is similar to the Gill Man, including the webbed hands with claws, although the head has been modified a bit.  Del Toro has admitted such, as he as a child rooted for the creature and Julie Adams, the female lead in that picture, to get together.  The idea of using the creature's genetics to help get man into space is a plot point in the sequel The Creature Walks Among Us.  

Not only does it explore the feelings that Elisa and the Amphibian Man have for each other, it explores how this can be consummated.  That was always a weird thing with the Gill Man, as in each movie he seemed to have a thing for the heroine, despite no obvious way that things were going to work out the way he hoped.  Here, although not explicitly shown, we get an explanation courtesy of Elisa's sign language.  But, then, it kind of makes sense in this universe, as the creature in The Shape of Water is much more than an evolutionary throwback.

While Sally Hawkins does an amazing job as Elisa and Richard Jenkins brings out the heart wrenching loneliness of Giles, a movie like this always needs a good villain.  Michael Shannon delivers, imbuing Strickland with the right amount of amoral swagger and casual misogyny of someone used to getting his way and always being on top.  It's not quite at the level of Gary Oldman in Leon the Professional, but in less capable hands it would have fallen into camp instead of feeling like a serious, tightly-wound threat.  Strickland's lack of emotion when it comes to inflicting pain, even on himself, makes him much more frightening than a creature that is only lashing out to defend itself.

2018 was a weird year for the Oscars, as this was up against another small-budget horror film, Get Out.  It was also up against Dunkirk and Darkest Hour, both more typical of what one would expect Academy voters to go for.  It is nice to see what has been a stodgy old institution start to break out of its mold but, even with the great performances, there is something about Guillermo del Toro being able to make a script like this, which must have sounded like it was written by a drunk 9-year-old, work.  The emotion is there without forcing it, there is plenty of action and blood to balance out the romantic drama and, given that it's an interspecies romantic drama, it comes off heartwarming rather than disgusting, is a credit.

We still didn't need that scene with the cat, though.  

The Shape of Water (2017)

Time: 123 minutes

Starring: Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlberg

Director: Guillermo del Toro