Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a lullaby, a film that hums to the scope of a giant cinema screen. Of course, his usual penchant for monsters, blood, and gore exist in it, so does his emotional sprite that connects to a heart that beats. In this case, perhaps if you put your ears to it like Elisa (Sally Hawkins) does, you’ll hear the ebb and flow of the ocean, the transcendent rhythm that carries the enduring testimony that our planet is alive with movement.
The tenacious leitmotif of water opens the film, as we navigate, we see objects stranded in water, like an abandoned compartment of a shipwreck. A voiceover reassures us in, a device that del Toro usually employs to tell us, all will end in this. The voiceover fades, the water vanishes, and we are in the apartment of Elisa, a woman bereft of voice, but gifted with an expressive pair of eyes.
Elisa’s morning ritual consists of boiled eggs, followed by an intense session of masturbation in the bathtub. She is a woman who knows her pleasures well. She lives above a movie theatre, and her best friend is her next door neighbour, Giles (Richard Jenkins) who lives with his cats, and paintbrushes that don’t earn him colours of life.
The world of Elisa is the America of the 60s, lit up by the nightly charms of bulbs and tubelights. Soviet paranoia butters everyday conversations, and American decency is still a hot seller. Elisa works as a janitor in a secret government lab, and her African-American co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) doubles up as her friend and interpreter. Zelda has an acid tongue, the kind that amuses friends, burns others, and delights audiences.
Elisa sways through everyday chores at home and works with glided ease, as if she is guided by a secret song that only she can hear. The dirty work doesn’t make her soiled, she can lean at the window pane to dream a little dream. And this ability of hers, dreaming despite staying in half dirt makes her see beauty in an enigmatic creature (Doug Jones evoking physical spectacle hiding in a suit) that bites off fingers when angry.
This improbable romance, at the heart of the film, is a ring of hope. Unlike del Toro’s earlier works where tragedies show utter desperation to befall, this film sails along with a certain buoyancy that helps the romance blossom, aided by Alexandre Desplat’s rhythmic score.
Elisa, with no audible words at her disposal has constricted her world within two friends. The creature, may be an Amazon God, is chained, and doesn't belong to the world of human understanding. Dr Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a man whose patriotism questions his human decency. Zelda, despite her quips, is stuck in a hopeless marriage. But the most heartbreaking character in the film is Giles, a gay man in 60s America who has neither career nor youth by his side.
Despite being made to draw a trivial jelly ad multiple times, he is a man of fine creative feeling and compassion. The first time he sees the creature, he is shaken, but he calls him beautiful. He draws him into fine sketches.
When the creature devours one of his cats, and injures him, he doesn't lose his temper because he understands the natural instinct of the creature. He longs for the touch of a man, and acknowledges his loneliness in a way only a man bereaved of ego can do. Jenkins modulates his voice with such melancholic mastery that you want to give him a tight hug, and reassure him of a better tomorrow.
The villain of the piece, Colonel Richard Strickland played by Michael Shannon, gives momentum to the events and motives to the characters. Strickland drives a Cadillac, reads The Power of Positive Thinking, and performs sex like a machine. He uses an electric rod to torture the creature, makes sexual advances without compunction, and thinks of cleaners as below-humans.
There are thoughtful details, but the script by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor doesn't warrant much exploration into his nature, despite making him an anchorite. The hectic plot renders him a caricature with his cruelty pitching the band of outsiders against him. But if our current climate is voting caricatures to power, you can’t hold del Toro responsible for adding another.
For an outsider working in the world’s most coveted film industry, del Toro knows the radiance of kindness, which he offers his characters with narrative joy, and in turn to us. The blessing is upon us, for he makes films for us.
(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder)
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