Love in “The Shape of Water” Shapes Up Nicely
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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