Love in “The Shape of Water” Shapes Up Nicely

Release Date:Dec/22/2017
Genre:
Adventure/Drama/Fantasy
Director:
Guillermo del Toro
Cast:
Sally Hawkins、Richard Jenkins、Octavia Spencer、Michael Shannon


Viola's Rating:8.5







If you still remember, “Titanic” broke the record of Academy Awards in 1988 with 14 nominations and 11 wins. Later in 2004, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” jointly holds the record for the largest number of Oscar wins with “Ben-Hur” and “Titanic”, and this year, Mexican Director Guillermo del Toro’s latest feature film “The Shape of Water” has great possibilities to catch up or even rewrite the record book with 13 nominations in hand.

Since the film is related to water, and Venice International Film Festival is held in City of Water, being awarded the Golden Lion suits “The Shape of Water” perfectly. The plot of the flick follows a top secret government research laboratory in the 1960s setting in Baltimore; a mute, lonely janitor, Elisa, develops a distinctive relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.


Colors play an important part as metaphors in “The Shape of Water”. Aside from black the darkness and red the passion, “teal” is especially pointed out. Neither azure blue nor verdant green, but the greenish-blue hue is presented all along the motion picture. From the water on the poster, the skin tone of the creature to the ending credit, this cold color provides warmth to the audience from beginning to end.

Director Del Toro’s celebrated for making colorful and fancy movies with admirable visual effects, and as “The Shape of Water” is artistically amazing, the editing is indescribable attractive as well. Utilizing the camera movement “tilt” emphasizes the attribute that the two main characters form their exceptional connection “under” the water.

Besides the pure but a little bit bizarre love “The Shape of Water” celebrates, the picture discusses the matter of bible story and decency, which are also what Del Toro’s famous for: celebrating imperfection and religious imagery. Nevertheless, it’s not way too serious to make the feature film enjoyable, but exactly to the right degree.

Highlighting the fact that the relationship between the protagonists is beyond words, Elisa communicates with the creature using sign language. More than one form of “language” is brought up in “The Shape of Water”: music, painting, foreign language, etc. Being called “the asset” and “the cleaner”, these inconspicuous figures see each other as who they really are. With or without language, their hearts are linked together, and that’s something not everyone in the film can understand.

Just like Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” sings, when lovers fall for the shape of each other, they “push and pull like a magnet do”. Others may not comprehend their feelings, but through “The Shape of Water”, moviegoers get to experience a bit, and there’s neither a sentence nor a word needed to explain how precious witnessing their love shaping up in one of the best flicks during Oscar-bait months is. 

Picture Credit: IMDb

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