Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor
Photography: Dan Laustsen
Music: Alexandre Desplat
Editor: Sidney Wolinsky
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Doug Jones, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lauren Lee Smith, Nick Searcy, David Hewlett
I took a second look at The Shape of Water the other day and found my original review basically covered all the main points I have to make (it’s linked down there at #5 in the list below). It’s still a monster movie that makes me cry. The period detail—early-‘60s US Cold War—is still on the nose (in the Urban Dictionary sense of “unsubtle or overly and clumsily direct” as opposed to the older sense, which is its opposite, “precisely correct” ... how do these things in language happen? Compare the verb “table”). And Sally Hawkins particularly but the whole cast is still tremendously good. After Pacific Rim it’s probably my favorite movie I’ve seen by director and cowriter Guillermo del Toro. So see the movie. Read my original review.
This second time through I had occasion to think about my problems with del Toro, whose work has been so disappointing so often I have tended to avoid it, and thus have many many gaps with him. I just realized now, for example, he did Nightmare Alley (which came out totally in the middle of Covid ... I still haven’t been back to a movie theater, but soon). Anyway, I know this is chatty and all over the place, I have plans to write about Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio soon and I should probably look at del Toro’s Pinocchio for that. Oh heck, I probably should have looked at it for this. A second look at The Shape of Water helped clarify some of the problem. It’s not so much anything to do with del Toro. It’s on me, or mostly.
I took a second look at The Shape of Water the other day and found my original review basically covered all the main points I have to make (it’s linked down there at #5 in the list below). It’s still a monster movie that makes me cry. The period detail—early-‘60s US Cold War—is still on the nose (in the Urban Dictionary sense of “unsubtle or overly and clumsily direct” as opposed to the older sense, which is its opposite, “precisely correct” ... how do these things in language happen? Compare the verb “table”). And Sally Hawkins particularly but the whole cast is still tremendously good. After Pacific Rim it’s probably my favorite movie I’ve seen by director and cowriter Guillermo del Toro. So see the movie. Read my original review.
This second time through I had occasion to think about my problems with del Toro, whose work has been so disappointing so often I have tended to avoid it, and thus have many many gaps with him. I just realized now, for example, he did Nightmare Alley (which came out totally in the middle of Covid ... I still haven’t been back to a movie theater, but soon). Anyway, I know this is chatty and all over the place, I have plans to write about Disney’s 1940 Pinocchio soon and I should probably look at del Toro’s Pinocchio for that. Oh heck, I probably should have looked at it for this. A second look at The Shape of Water helped clarify some of the problem. It’s not so much anything to do with del Toro. It’s on me, or mostly.
It's about expectations. Del Toro obviously likes monsters and thinks about them intensely—and makes great ones. And monsters intersect with horror movies. I will see the visuals or get the plot summary for a del Toro project and it often triggers my expectations for horror—especially the visuals. But despite everything on the surface I don’t think del Toro can be judged that way. Fantasy also intersects with horror—arguably horror is the subset of fantasy—and del Toro can be much closer to that. My tastes run in other directions. My latter forays into contemporary horror stories have inevitably found me confronting a lot of what I would call fantasy, which I can’t say I care for. I slogged through The Lord of the Rings when I was 19, didn’t go for it in a big way but it felt like required reading at the time and ultimately it may have been the key to adoring Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations when I was in my 40s. Still, it is the exception for me.
Pan’s Labyrinth is more squarely in a fantasy vein, though of course it has a monster amid the magical fauna. Pacific Rim is rock ‘em sock ‘em Godzilla/King Kong battles and the special effects are impressive, the reason it’s my favorite. While I’m categorizing, I would say The Shape of Water—also with a monster—is closest to a romance, with all the familiar beats of connection, crisis, and resolution. It’s a very beautiful romance. I recommend you bring a hanky it's so beautiful. The security facility janitor Elisa (Hawkins) is a deeply fascinating character with many layers. The monster here—known only as “the asset” by the US Cold War military spook types, but appearing in the credits as Amphibian Man—is more mysterious but equally enthralling. They’re a good couple.
However, consider the way del Toro sets up expectations (and/or I take the bait, so to speak). Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) is clearly modeled on the amphibious walking thing in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a late entry from Universal, coming in the 1950s, but set up to fit the Universal monster model of Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Werewolf, etc. For what it’s worth, I recall The Creature From the Black Lagoon as one of the first horror movies I saw as a kid, begging my parents to let me watch it on late-night TV. It scared me quite badly—I mean the monster itself, just the sight of it, along with the blaring brassy soundtrack I recall accompanying its every appearance.
It’s fair to call The Creature From the Black Lagoon horror, not fantasy, and certainly not romance. More telltale details: Amphibian Man has been found inside the Amazonian jungle in South America, a favorite source of the strange for weird and horror writers. It appears likely Amphibian Man is “a god,” as they say here, by which is meant an evolutionarily superior being. In fact, the real monster in The Shape of Water, of course, is the very base human Strickland (Michael Shannon, having a ball and quite scary), who is an ambitious military dude, a disgusting racist and sexist pig, a sadistic miscreant—I mean, you name it. Del Toro really piles on with that character, who is so horrible he actually becomes hard to watch. But the monster that actually looks like a monster also happens to look a lot like Black Lagoon’s worst, which is setting up expectations of horror on some level.
The contrasts are severe and thus a natural and common temptation has been to focus on that structural element and call the whole thing a “fairy tale.” A lot of del Toro’s work seems to be taken as fairy tales. Which, OK, if that works for you. I can’t recall getting anything from a fairy tale like the swooning romantic hit this movie delivers. Maybe it works that way for some with Snow White or Cinderella or something. At any rate, I think we can all agree we are far afield of horror here. On to Pinocchio.
Top 20 of 2017
1. I, Tonya
2. Lean on Pete
3. First Reformed
4. The Ritual
5. The Shape of Water (first cut)
6. Get Out
7. The Lego Batman Movie
8. Lady Bird
9. Phoenix Forgotten
10. The Disaster Artist
11. Logan
12. The Florida Project
13. Faces Places
14. John Wick: Chapter 2
15. Lucky
16. Ingrid Goes West
17. Nico, 1988
18. Baby Driver
19. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World
20. Wonder Woman
Other write-ups: The Beguiled; The Big Sick; Blade Runner 2049; Call Me by Your Name; The Case for Christ; Detroit; Dunkirk; Kong: Skull Island; Mother!; Phantom Thread; Thoroughbreds; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Twin Peaks: The Return; Wormwood; You Were Never Really Here
Pan’s Labyrinth is more squarely in a fantasy vein, though of course it has a monster amid the magical fauna. Pacific Rim is rock ‘em sock ‘em Godzilla/King Kong battles and the special effects are impressive, the reason it’s my favorite. While I’m categorizing, I would say The Shape of Water—also with a monster—is closest to a romance, with all the familiar beats of connection, crisis, and resolution. It’s a very beautiful romance. I recommend you bring a hanky it's so beautiful. The security facility janitor Elisa (Hawkins) is a deeply fascinating character with many layers. The monster here—known only as “the asset” by the US Cold War military spook types, but appearing in the credits as Amphibian Man—is more mysterious but equally enthralling. They’re a good couple.
However, consider the way del Toro sets up expectations (and/or I take the bait, so to speak). Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) is clearly modeled on the amphibious walking thing in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a late entry from Universal, coming in the 1950s, but set up to fit the Universal monster model of Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Werewolf, etc. For what it’s worth, I recall The Creature From the Black Lagoon as one of the first horror movies I saw as a kid, begging my parents to let me watch it on late-night TV. It scared me quite badly—I mean the monster itself, just the sight of it, along with the blaring brassy soundtrack I recall accompanying its every appearance.
It’s fair to call The Creature From the Black Lagoon horror, not fantasy, and certainly not romance. More telltale details: Amphibian Man has been found inside the Amazonian jungle in South America, a favorite source of the strange for weird and horror writers. It appears likely Amphibian Man is “a god,” as they say here, by which is meant an evolutionarily superior being. In fact, the real monster in The Shape of Water, of course, is the very base human Strickland (Michael Shannon, having a ball and quite scary), who is an ambitious military dude, a disgusting racist and sexist pig, a sadistic miscreant—I mean, you name it. Del Toro really piles on with that character, who is so horrible he actually becomes hard to watch. But the monster that actually looks like a monster also happens to look a lot like Black Lagoon’s worst, which is setting up expectations of horror on some level.
The contrasts are severe and thus a natural and common temptation has been to focus on that structural element and call the whole thing a “fairy tale.” A lot of del Toro’s work seems to be taken as fairy tales. Which, OK, if that works for you. I can’t recall getting anything from a fairy tale like the swooning romantic hit this movie delivers. Maybe it works that way for some with Snow White or Cinderella or something. At any rate, I think we can all agree we are far afield of horror here. On to Pinocchio.
Top 20 of 2017
1. I, Tonya
2. Lean on Pete
3. First Reformed
4. The Ritual
5. The Shape of Water (first cut)
6. Get Out
7. The Lego Batman Movie
8. Lady Bird
9. Phoenix Forgotten
10. The Disaster Artist
11. Logan
12. The Florida Project
13. Faces Places
14. John Wick: Chapter 2
15. Lucky
16. Ingrid Goes West
17. Nico, 1988
18. Baby Driver
19. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World
20. Wonder Woman
Other write-ups: The Beguiled; The Big Sick; Blade Runner 2049; Call Me by Your Name; The Case for Christ; Detroit; Dunkirk; Kong: Skull Island; Mother!; Phantom Thread; Thoroughbreds; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Twin Peaks: The Return; Wormwood; You Were Never Really Here
I've never seen a del Toro movie I didn't like ... well, maybe the first Hellboy, but I've often thought if I watched it now, having seen most of his films since, that I would like it, too. Like you, I recently re-watched Shape of Water and my opinion was even more positive than before ... I think it ranks with Pan's Labyrinth as his best. Glad to see Pacific Rim get acclaim here. All in all, perhaps his movies fall into a category I name Not for Steven, although for you it would be Not for Jeff :-).
ReplyDeleteHa, yes, maybe so. My latest try with him before this was a specific episode from his Cabinet of Curiosities series that somebody on social media was talking up. Also, I did not realize there were actually two Pinocchio movies last year, which I have been mixing up. Going to see both, as well as the classic '40, and certainly have more hopes for the del Toro over the Tom Hanks vehicle.
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