The film opens underwater. As the camera swims through a flooded apartment we are guided into the world of the film through a voiceover. This voiceover promises a story of a princess without a voice in the last days of a prince’s reign, a story of love and loss and of the “monster who destroyed it all”. Already we are deep in classic Del Toro territory. The Shape of Water is, in many ways, a much needed return to form for a director whose last few projects have been either a sequel (Hellboy II: The Golden Army), commercial blockbuster (Pacific Rim), or overlooked flop (Crimson Peak). This latest effort from Del Toro is more in line with his earlier work, as if the director who brought us such masterpieces as Chronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth has once again stepped behind the camera. From the story, written by Del Toro, to the meticulous attention to period and production design, as well as to the return of putting actors in elaborate monster costumes (and having them dance as well), yes the Del Toro that we knew is still alive and kicking.
But first let's talk about the plot. I don’t want to get too in-depth here, after all the film is a big reference to those classic creature b-movies of the 50’s and 60’s, so the plot is purposefully convoluted. Complete with macho G-men in suits, space race technology, Russian spies, and everything in between. So here is the important stuff, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaning lady at a top secret government facility falls in love with the facility’s newest addition, a fish creature from the rivers of South America. The U.S. thinks that the creature can give them an edge in the space race so of course he is imprisoned and put through a gauntlet of inhumane test. Over time Elisa forms a bond with the creature, and with the help of a few others, hatches a plan to help him escape.
Shape of Water succeeds in both subverting and paying homage to many classic Hollywood genres such as the sci-fi b-movie, the creature feature, and even the musical. The characters of the film itself are surrounded by cinema. Elisa and her next-door neighbor, an advertising artist who works from home, live in two shady apartments above a movie theater. The neighbor, played by Richard Jenkins, constantly has old Hollywood musicals playing on his television set, he even seems to know all of the actresses by name. Although this seems trivial, it gets directly to the heart of what Del Toro achieves in Shape of Water. As a director, Del Toro’s biggest thematic obsession has always been observing the other, which in the case of his filmography often end up being monsters, misunderstood by society. In Shape of Water, we are introduced to a cast of real world others. Elisa is mute, her neighbor gay, her best friend black. In the film, the man who captures the fishy friend is a tough and disturbingly cruel army man by the name of Mr. Strickland (a terrific performance from Richard Shannon). Beyond his role as the monster’s captor and Elisa and co.’s antagonist, he also represents a mid-century machismo that is indicative of the patriarchal, straight, white, male normativity of American culture. How is the way that he treats the creature any different than the way all minorities have been treated in American society, both in the 50′s/60’s as well as still today? Del Toro is asking us to examine Hollywood cinema of the past, the way that it has always upheld a fear of the other. In the context of our current situation, Del Toro’s film may very well be his most overtly political to date. By both emulating and critiquing the monster movie Del Toro has successfully updated it and created a b-movie worthy of our modern times.
