The Shape of Water
Maybe it was the ominous, lonely feeling on Church Street, or the bone-rattling, below zero temps. Perhaps it was my cold, cold nose or ice block feet that refused to thaw or the young, slightly tipsy couple behind us who talked through the entire thing and committed that most offensive of all movie-going trespasses — saying the obvious thing we are all watching out loud. Maybe it was all these things or none of these things, but I did not like The Shape of Water (del Toro 2016).
I know a lot of you did.
Certainly I appreciated the gorgeous palette deftly painted by Guillermo del Toro, the lavish sumptuousness of the art direction, and of course, the wonderful performances. It just wasn't enough to trod out this tired, old Fish Out of Water story and hit us over the head with yet another morally-holier-than-thou fable: its OK to love the other — whether in the form the sassy black woman (not again Octavia, ouch) or a young peddler of pie or beautiful, boggy beast. Ben Sachs of the Chicago Reader summed it up perfectly: The movie's worldview is as easy to like as the protagonist and her friends, but del Toro lays it on so thick that there's no room for counterargument or even independent thought.
When misapplied, nothing pisses me off more than unwarranted sex or violence on screen, and The Shape of Water committed both of these cinematic sins in spades. I found the nudity and sex gratuitous and worse, hypocritical. So we get to see Sally Hawkins in all her full frontal glory but the male lead looks like a Ken doll down there? What? A discrepancy so egregious it had to be addressed in the clunky dialogue. The violence — jarring and bloody was indulgent and unnecessary.
The use of color, though heavy handed was lavish and lovely. Sally Hawkins, almost entirely swathed in bottle or mineral green throughout, symbolizes water and life and youth and the renewal of Spring (until her sexual awakening when she is swathed in scarlet, curious). Her glossy black hair shimmering and refracting the greens and blues all around her, mimicking the 'monster' who quite literally lights up.
In contrast, Michael Shannon's home is the color of Autumn and decay. Even his wife is orange, which brings to mind another orange villain... In an interview after winning Best Director at The Golden Globes last night, Guillermo del Toro said he won't “impose” a Trump-themed monster on audiences, but maybe he already did. As a Mexican, and a lover of monsters, can Del Toro, himself an Other, create a fable that doesn't impose the orange menace on audiences? For me, for all it's good intentions and beauty, The Shape of Water, drowned in its own self-importance.
~fin~
