The Shape of Water
From the fire of Hellboy to the lofty imaginative air of Pan’s Labyrinth to the mined earth beneath the mansion of Crimson Peak, on his tenth feature Guillermo del Toro continues his exploration of the elements and primal emotions as he considers The Shape of Water, the writer/director swimming through uncharted territory while carrying in his wake the themes of aliens and outsiders upon which he has built his career.
It is the early sixties, an era of great optimism built on a shaky foundation, the second world war fading into memory as the cold war pushes the space race forwards while on the ground the civil rights movement causes unrest. In sleepy Baltimore, all this is a world away for Elisa Esposito (Godzilla‘s Sally Hawkins), working as a janitor at the Occam Laboratory.
A mute who lives alone in her gloomy apartment above the Orpheum picture house, her only friends are her neighbour Giles (Bone Tomahawk‘s Richard Jenkins), an illustrator with a fondness for old musicals, and her co-worker Zelda (Hidden Figures‘ Octavia Spencer) who acts as her interpreter and takes care of both of them.
Arriving into their relatively sedate world with a splash is the sadistic Colonel Richard Strickland (Midnight Special‘s Michael Shannon), an angry, intolerant man driven by a Biblical fury who has returned from South America with “the asset,” an amphibious creature whose dual respiration system he hopes will provide an advantage to the space programme and secure American supremacy in orbit.
Immediately drawn to the lonely and frightened creature and accustomed to being overlooked, Elisa is able to steal moments with it, sharing her love of jazz and hard-boiled eggs, able to communicate in kindness what Strickland cannot despite his vast rhetoric and rank, and so becoming a threat to his plans.
Undeniably a fairy tale closer in spirit to a dream than the sometimes hard-edged del Toro, closest in style and structure to Pan’s Labyrinth it is consciously aimed at a wider audience in that it is English language rather than Spanish, despite two of the characters being non-verbal, and emphasising the unlikely romance of the situation.
The other connection is of course del Toro’s regular collaborator Doug Jones who appeared as both the Faun and the Pale Man in that film, here playing a character with a strong resemblance to Abe Sapien, the amphibious telepath whom Jones portrayed in del Toro’s two Hellboy films, a character whom they had wished to explore to greater depth.
That chance now having arisen in this parallel evolution which grants Jones his most prominent role yet in a del Toro production, despite having no dialogue he is a fascinating and complex character, sympathetic and endearing, Elisa’s fascination with him easy to comprehend, the creation a perfect blending of del Toro’s imagination, Jones’ dedication and talent and the numerous technicians who designed and fabricated the costume.
Bathed in teal and aquamarine from the opening moments, unlike much of del Toro’s work The Shape of Water is not forcefully overdesigned, the visual aesthetic enhancing rather than overwhelming the somewhat slight and occasionally improbable narrative, and the solid and expansive sets of the complex and the period props add much to the atmosphere.
Already showered with a slew and awards, accolades and nominations before it has even received general release in the UK when for so long any fantasy element in a serious film would be looked down upon with derision, that such a hybrid project can be accepted on its own terms and connect with both audiences and critics is an encouraging sign, and it is to be hoped that The Shape of Water will cause further ripples.
The Shape of Water is on general release from Wednesday 14th February
