The Shape of Water: A (Classic?) Love Story

Guillermo del Toro loves movies, and that love always shines through his films. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that The Shape of Water, while ostensibly a movie about a romance between a woman and a fish-man (no, that's not a typo), is also a movie that revels in telling a story in the most visually striking fashion possible. The plot is very simple (you've probably figured it all out from the trailer), but there's nothing simple about the beautiful way this story unfolds on screen.

Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute woman who works as a cleaning lady in a top secret government facility. She is friends with her neighbor, Giles (the always lovely Richard Jenkins), and her colleague, Zelda (the also, always lovely Octavia Spencer), and has a routine, scheduled life. However, when the "asset" arrives at one of the labs in her facility, things go haywire. The asset is a man-fish (played by Doug Jones, who is getting no credit for his work but really deserves some recognition for being trapped in this prosthetic body suit and acting his heart out) and over time, he and Elisa develop a camaraderie, perhaps owing to the fact that neither can speak but still find a way to communicate with each other. So when Elisa learns that the lab plans to kill the asset for an educational vivisection, she enlists the help of her friends to bust him out.

Every character in this movie is fairly one-dimensional, none more so than Michael Shannon who plays the villainous government agent who manages to be evil and horrifying to every single person/creature he encounters. Sally Hawkins is the only one who has real room to emote and she does so beautifully, as she has to convey all of her feeling through her facial expressions or vehement sign language. As she and the man-fish fall in love, we are treated to spectacular aquatic imagery that will make you want to dive into the ocean and go find a merman of your own.

The movie opens with a watery introduction that immediately told me what I was getting into. I kept thinking, "how do they do that," and the answer is that I really don't want to know, as long as I can keep watching such mesmerizing work on the big screen. Del Toro's love of horror does assert itself throughout the piece and there are some bloody moments that made me cringe from time to time. But then we would go back to beautiful scenes that looked like they were cut from a painting that I would happily stare at all day long. There's even an homage to Astaire & Rogers that looks like a scene out of Top Hat, because that's what us old-school cinephiles want to see: a tap dancing merman!

The Shape of Water is a drop-dead gorgeous movie. Do I think it should win the Best Picture Oscar or kudos for its Screenplay? No. But do I think it should get recognized for Special Effects, Cinematography, or even a Best Actress nod for Sally Hawkins? Yes, please.