Film review: The Shape Of Water

This is my first film review (finally) so let's see how it goes. I am going to review the brilliant film The Shape Of Water released in 2017, directed by Guillermo del Toro and staring Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer and Doug Jones in the main roles. When it comes to awards the film was really successful, winning Best Director for Guillermo del Toro at most of the awards ceremonies and Best Picture, Best Actress for Sally Hawkins and Best Film Score for Alexandre Desplat at several awards ceremonies, in my opinion all are well deserved.

Before I go further I will say that there will be spoilers, so if you intend to watch the film and don't like spoilers wait to see the film first.

This film is set in Baltimore in 1962 and follows the lead character Eliza Esposito (Sally Hawkins) who has been mute since she was a baby and communicates through sign language. Her only friends are her closeted homosexual neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) and her co-worker Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer), they are cleaners at a secret government laboratory. When a strange amphibian creature (Doug Jones) is brought in by Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) Eliza is curious and after gaining access to the lab the creature is in and interacting with him, they fall in love. This prompts Eliza to enlists Giles' help to free the creature, during Zelda initially tries to stop Eliza but helps in the end, they also get unexpected help from Dr. Robert Hoffstetler, who is secretly a Russian scientist. Eliza and Giles keep the creature in Eliza's bath while they wait to release him, meanwhile Colonel Strickland searches for the creature. He eventually discovers what happened, after believing Russian spies were the culprits, he confronts Eliza and Giles as they are about to release the creature. Eliza and the creature are shot, the creature kills Colonel Strickland and takes Eliza into the sea with him and heals her while giving her gills so she can live with him in the sea.

I loved so many things about this film, firstly the concept of the love story, the fact that Eliza is mute has always made her different to other humans but this amphibian creature doesn't know that she is different and therefore sees her for who she is and not what she is. I enjoyed watching the love story develop as Eliza communicated with the creature and he learned sign language from her to communicate in the same way. This all made for a different love story to mast other films.

Another very interesting part of the film is the choice of characters with whom Eliza is close, Giles and Zelda are very interesting choices for the time the film is set. Being homosexual was still not fully accepted in the early 60's, even though some states legalised homosexuality in 1962 some didn't until 2003, this would have made life difficult for Giles as shown in a cafe scene where he was kicked out after defending an African-American couple and expressing a small amount of homosexuality. This leads to Zelda being African- American and Baltimore still being fairly racist in the 60's, meaning Zelda was marginalised and this comes up several times in the form of 'your people' and 'people like you'. These things make it interesting as it's clear they are all outsiders, which makes sense that Eliza would befriend them but they are also her voice as the majority of people didn't know sign language in the 60's so Eliza had to communicate through her friends, even if they themselves were essentially 'invisible' to everyone else. These factors definitely helped with freeing the creature as no-one suspected them which allowed them to get away with it for so long.

The film is set in the height of the Cold War between the USA and Russia, the tensions of this are evident in the film, especially when Dr Hoffstetler is revealed as a Russian spy as well as a scientist. What I found particularly interesting about this character is he goes against the stereotypes of a Russian spy that are normally displayed in films, we usually see cold emotionless characters who want to get their results by any means necessary, while this is true of his superiors Dr Hoffstetler is different and cares for the creature. He pleaded with his superiors to spare the creature when time became short but was denied and given the tools to kill and remove the creature for them, this is what leads him to help Eliza and her friends, once he discovers they are freeing the creature he helps and even gives them the information they need to keep him alive until the release him. Ultimately this lead to his superiors killing him for failing to achieve his goal, which was expected given my previous comments about them.

The amphibian creature was definitely enthralling to watch, the way he acted and learned was almost like a baby learning things for the first time. Seeing the creature display his intelligence while falling in love with Eliza was fascinating and proved that there shouldn't be any barrier between intelligent life. The discoveries made about the creature really added to the overall picture of how fascinating he is, he can survive out of water for a certain amount of time which made it interesting keeping him in a bath, he can heal himself and others as we saw at the end but also earlier when he accidentally hurts Giles but heals him and make his hair grow back, the creature also has the ability to feel emotions in a similar way to humans, obviously love but also shame, fear, gratitude etc. All of this made the creature even more interesting than the initial comment of 'a simple beast' by Colonel Strickland.

Then we come to Colonel Srickland himself who is a man that just wants to find out what he can and complete his mission, which gets derailed when the creature is freed and he is in the firing line for the blame if he can't find the creature. The interesting part of this character is that if the film was set 10 years earlier he would have been the hero of the story and not the villain, this adds to his perspective as he feel like he is doing the right thing by hunting down the creature, even though this gets him killed and gives the creature his own freedom.

Overall I really enjoyed the film and definitely see why it won so many awards, it is so refreshing when a love story is different to all the others and especially when so many marginalised characters come together to help it's progress while also defying how they are seen. This is a film I would highly recommend watching and I look forward to watching again to see if there are new things I can discover that I missed first time.

My rating for The Shape Of Water is 9.5/10

I would love to know your opinions, do you love the film as much as me?