THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017)

Studio:       Fox Searchlight
Director:    Guillermo del Toro
Writer:       Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor
Producer:  J. Miles Dale, Guillermo del Toro
Stars:     Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer, Nick Searcy, David Hewlett

Review Score:

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Summary:

A lonely custodian falls in love with an amphibious creature held captive in a secret government laboratory.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Mute custodian Elisa Esposito goes through her daily routine, which includes greeting her artist neighbor and dear friend Giles, in her apartment above the Orpheum movie theater. Elisa then takes the bus to Occam Aerospace Research Center in Baltimore where she works alongside Zelda Fuller, her only other friend, as a night shift cleaner in the government facility.

Security head Fleming is displaced when Richard Strickland arrives at Occam with a mysterious Amphibian Man and a military escort. Strickland keeps the creature captive in a water tank inside a classified lab. Dr. Robert Hoffstetler oversees scientific research on the project. Elisa and Zelda are both initially frightened by the unusual specimen.

Giles takes Elisa out for pie at Dixie Doug’s, although it becomes clear that Giles’ true interest lies in indulging his crush on the young male server who works behind the counter.

Elisa and Zelda have an awkward encounter with Strickland while cleaning the men’s room. Elisa notices blood left behind on the sink where Strickland had placed his electric cattle prod.

Strickland stumbles out of the lab clutching his hand where two fingers were severed. Fleming tasks Elisa and Zelda with cleaning the bloody lab. Elisa finds Strickland’s missing fingers. Left alone when Zelda leaves to hand over the fingers, Elisa encounters the creature through the glass of his chamber.

Elisa tells Giles about the Amphibian Man. Giles submits advertising artwork to his former employer Bernie, but is told to rework the illustration. Bernie also infers that the client may wish to instead use a photo for a more modern approach.

Elisa begins regularly taking secret breaks inside the lab where she feeds the Amphibian Man eggs, plays him records, and teaches him sign language. They gradually form an emotional connection.

Strickland summons Elisa and Zelda to his office. In reviewing her personnel file, Strickland learns that Elisa is an orphan who was found by the river and has unusual scars on either side of her neck. Strickland mentions that his body might reject his reattached fingers. Strickland also tells the women that he found the creature in the South American Amazon, where it was worshipped as a god. However, Strickland stresses that it isn’t human and they are to have no interaction with the creature.

Fleming drives Strickland home to his wife Elaine and two children. While having sex, Elaine notices that Strickland’s fingers are bleeding.

Dr. Hoffstetler secretly observes one of Elisa’s interactions with the creature. Hoffstetler is revealed to actually be a Soviet spy named Dmitri when he meets with Russian agent Mihalkov to discuss their secret plan to kidnap the creature.

Elisa drops one of her hardboiled eggs when she enters the Amphibian Man’s chamber to find him chained and beaten. Elisa hides when Strickland returns to continue torturing the creature. Strickland finds the egg.

General Hoyt arrives at the facility to examine the asset firsthand. Strickland recommends vivisecting the creature to learn about its physiology. Hoffstetler vehemently opposes the idea, stressing that the Amphibian Man is too unique of a specimen to be killed. Hoyt ultimately agrees with Strickland. Hoffstetler notices Elisa hiding, but again says nothing.

Elisa tells Giles about the situation and insists that the Amphibian Man must be saved. Giles dismisses Elisa’s rescue plan as foolish by reiterating that the creature isn’t human.

Bernie rejects Giles’ second gelatin artwork submission. By finally making a pass at him, Giles discovers that the Pie Guy is both homophobic and racist. Realizing he is alone, but that Elisa has a chance to be with someone who makes her happy, Giles commits to do whatever Elisa needs to rescue the Amphibian Man.

Hoffstetler learns from Mihalkov that Moscow rejected his extraction plan. Instead, Mihalkov gives Hoffstetler a serum and an Israeli “popper” bomb to use in a plot to kill the creature. Hoffstetler pleads that the Amphibian Man should be studied, but Mihalkov insists that the Soviets do not want to risk the Americans being able to learn anything from it.

Strickland purchases a new Cadillac. Zelda notices Elisa doing odd plotting around the facility. Giles creates false identification and van decals as part of Elisa’s rescue plan.

Strickland spills water to summon Elisa to his office after observing her furtive behavior over a monitor. Strickland sleazily suggests having sex with Elisa as she cleans.

Hoffstetler makes a futile appeal to Strickland to spare the Amphibian Man’s life. During their meeting, Hoffstetler spies Elisa moving the loading dock’s security camera.

Realizing that she plans to rescue the creature, Hoffstetler gives Elisa keys to the Amphibian Man’s metal restraints to aid their escape. While helping Elisa hide the creature in a laundry cart, Hoffstetler also explains what she needs to do to keep him alive.

Zelda notices that Elisa is nowhere to be found at the end of their shift. Zelda eventually finds Elisa and ultimately elects to help her smuggle the Amphibian Man out of the facility.

In a van disguised as a laundry service, Giles presents his fake ID to the security gate guard. Strickland sees the van’s arrival on the security camera and realizes something is amiss. Strickland grabs his cattle prod and rushes to the loading dock. When the MP gate guard recognizes the ID as fake, he demands that Giles exit the vehicle. Hoffstetler’s popper bomb detonates, creating distracting havoc throughout the facility. Hoffstetler rushes to the gate to inject the guard with the Soviet serum so that Giles can get the van to the loading bay.

Hoffstetler and Zelda load Elisa and the creature into Giles’ van. Hoffstetler and Zelda sneak away from the scene unnoticed.

Giles’ van crashes into Strickland’s Cadillac during their escape. Strickland fires his weapon at the van, but Giles gets away. He and Elisa get the Amphibian Man back to Elisa’s apartment and create a saltwater bath in time to save him.

General Hoyt threatens Strickland to find out what happened and retrieve the asset. Meanwhile, Elisa plans to hide the Amphibian Man until upcoming rains raise the canal high enough to release him into open water.

Elisa and Zelda return to work. Strickland summons them both to his office for questioning regarding the incident, but ultimately dismisses them in a demeaning manner.

Hoffstetler gives Elisa a hatbox containing items for the creature’s care and gives his contact information to Zelda. He also confesses that his real name is Dmitri. Strickland later questions Hoffstetler in a suspicious manner.

Giles falls asleep while guarding the Amphibian Man in the bathtub. The creature explores the adjacent apartments. Giles wakes to find the Amphibian Man eating one of his cats. Giles tries stopping the creature, but the Amphibian Man instinctively slashes Giles’ arm and escapes outside.

Elisa races home to frantically search for the creature. Elisa finds the Amphibian Man in the Orpheum Theater, entranced by the movie playing onscreen.

Elisa escorts the creature back upstairs. The Amphibian Man places one hand on Giles’ bald head and another on his arm wound. The creature’s skin then glows an iridescent blue color.

While alone together, Elisa gets into the bathtub naked and has sex with the Amphibian Man. When Zelda notices Elisa beaming at work, Elisa excitedly explains her romantic sexual encounter.

Mihalkov visits Hoffstetler’s apartment. Although he sticks to his story that he killed the creature, Hoffstetler suspects that the Russians might be planning to assassinate him, rather than provide the extraction out of America he was promised.

During an evening with his family, Strickland goes out to his Cadillac to ponder in solitude. Strickland observes his fingers continuing to rot, but does nothing about them.

Elisa floods her bathroom to the ceiling to make a water chamber for her and the Amphibian Man to be together. The water leaks into the theater below, prompting the building manager to threaten Giles. Giles opens the bathroom door and releases the water, but leaves Elisa alone when he sees her embracing the creature contentedly. Giles also realizes that he now has hair and his arm is healed where the Amphibian Man touched him.

General Hoyt again threatens Strickland to find the creature. Elisa fantasizes about singing in a black and white musical number with the Amphibian Man.

Zelda finds Elisa crying at work over the creature’s worsening physical condition. Zelda goes to see the Amphibian Man for herself and realizes he must be released soon. Zelda tries calling Hoffstetler, but he is already gone from his apartment.

Hoffstetler follows up on a summons to rendezvous at the extraction pickup point. Strickland relieves Fleming of his stakeout duties to tail Hoffstetler alone.

Mihalkov’s henchman shoots Hoffstetler in his face and stomach at the pickup point. Before the henchman can deliver the kill shot, Strickland arrives and shoots the henchman and Mihalkov. Now confirmed as a Russian spy, Strickland tortures Hoffstetler until he reveals that Elisa and Zelda took the creature. Strickland leaves Hoffstetler to bleed out from his wounds.

Strickland storms into Zelda’s home. While threatening her to reveal what happened to the Amphibian Man, Strickland tears off his own rotting fingers. Terrified, Zelda’s husband Brewster confesses that Elisa has the creature. After Strickland leaves, Zelda admonishes her husband and calls Elisa with a warning.

Elisa and Giles escape with the creature just as Strickland arrives at the apartment. However, Strickland finds the calendar revealing Elisa’s plan to release the Amphibian Man at the dock during that day’s downpour.

At the canal, Elisa tries explaining to the creature that she cannot go with him. Strickland arrives, knocks Giles down, and shoots both Elisa and the creature. Giles recovers and knocks down Strickland. The Amphibian Man heals his bullet wounds before confronting Strickland. Strickland observes that the creature may be a god after all as the Amphibian Man slashes his throat and kills him.

Zelda arrives at the dock with military police. She and Giles watch as the Amphibian Man jumps into the water cradling Elisa. Once submerged, the creature kisses Elisa. As the Amphibian Man glows, gills sprout from the scars on Elisa’s neck. Elisa and the creature embrace underwater.

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Review:

“The Shape of Water” plants itself in Baltimore during 1962.  Yet in much the same way that the movie blends multiple genres including romance, horror, drama, and fantasy, varying tones blend for an atmospheric potpourri defying compartmentalization.  The result, as if anyone would expect anything less from filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, yields a unique experience whose ability to stroke individual touchstones through universal themes transcends any singular time, location, or perspective.

Perhaps such a sentiment sounds like pompously pretentious praise.  But “The Shape of Water’s” carefully crafted texture swims in imaginative poeticism, taking both heart and mind to places where what you want to say about it can’t help but be birthed in lyrical language.  The movie figuratively and literally sings, dances, and inspires.  The effect the film has in turn demands watching it, weighing it, and wondering about it in big and bold concepts because its small story is equally big and bold, existing in a corner of cinema virtually all its own.

Elisa hides in plain sight within the hustle-bustle of a noisy world without a moment to pay her much mind.  A mute, marginalized woman in male-dominated space, Elisa spends days dotting her regular routine with idle fantasy and nights cleaning up the floors of a classified research facility.

The shackled Amphibian Man recently brought to the underground lab enjoys no such luxury of living unnoticed.  However, his secretive status holds him hostage in a tangible prison where solitude takes a more traditional form.  As inverse reflections of one another, his and Elisa’s similarly afflicted identities are destined to intertwine in a star-crossed romance the likes of which Shakespeare could never conceive.

Also on a collision course are an altruistic scientist and a grim G-man overseeing the creature’s uncomfortable captivity.  Dr. Hoffstetler has no chance of swaying Strickland’s unwavering position on ruling the Amphibian Man with an iron fist.  Elisa’s kindly neighbor Giles and concerned coworker Zelda have similarly little hope of convincing her that an interspecies relationship poses problems on more than one level.  When a gruff general gives an order to dissect the aquatic alien, everyone’s accelerated agendas jump tracks on journeys leading headfirst into each other at full speed.

“The Shape of Water” represents the pinnacle, currently, of Guillermo del Toro’s trajectory as an ever-evolving cinematic storyteller.  Pieces of each of his preceding projects can be seen somewhere within the present film, with those pieces being more confident, more colorful, more forceful, and more purposefully united in a common cause to invoke entertainment, adventure, astonishment, and empathy.

The subterranean spooks of “Mimic.”  The contemporary fairy tale feel of “Pan’s Labyrinth.”  The period piece flair of “Hellboy.”  The gothic grandeur of “Crimson Peak.”  Del Toro’s visual vocabulary, fascination with flipping human/monster relationship dynamics, and desire to explore reality through a fantastical lens have progressed to precise points enabling him to tell this peculiar tale in a particular manner.  Not to be reductively dismissive of his résumé, but viewed within del Toro’s overall body of work, “The Shape of Water” delivers a sense that all roads have deliberately led here.

Part of why “The Shape of Water” presents GDT at his filmmaking peak has to with his collaborators hitting professional peaks as well.  This is certainly the case with previous partners including costume designer Luis Sequeira and cinematographer Dan Lustsen.  But it is especially true of the complete cast, whose individual careers collectively contribute to this zeitgeist.

Michael Shannon lathers a shiny coat of reptilian sleaze over Strickland’s huffing and puffing powder keg personality using every swatch from the kooky confidence of “Elvis & Nixon” to the villainy of General Zod to the dogged persistence presented in “Boardwalk Empire” and “Premium Rush.”  Giles shows Richard Jenkins summoning his stoic father figure from “Six Feet Under,” deceptively cunning comic relief from “Bone Tomahawk” (review score), even aged man fighting the flow of a life slipping away in “Friends with Benefits.”  Zelda similarly becomes the ‘empowered woman before her time’ figure that she is because of what Octavia Spencer brings to the character from “The Help” and “Hidden Figures.”

Shades of Sy Feltz and Arnold Rothstein are seen in Michael Stuhlbarg’s Hoffstetler.  Doug Jones, as usual, is more than a ‘man in a suit’ performer, motivating animalistic mannerisms with a humanistic heart.  Nick Searcy makes a case to edge out Glenn Morshower as the go-to choice for a no-nonsense military man with a drawl.  Sally Hawkins easily emerges as a standout star.  No one else could play these people the same way, and they are who they are because of what each performer’s persona contributes to these roles.

“The Shape of Water” contains layers impossible to cover within the confines of a regular review with only a few hours to process the film’s complete contents.  Subtext can almost certainly be found by paralleling Elisa’s transformative experience against the reattached finger rebellion suffered by Strickland’s body.  Fiction can simultaneously be set aside in favor of tackling the movie’s topical takes on racial tension, oppression, sexuality, and advancing social norms.

Running over two hours in length, “The Shape of Water” doesn’t consistently make effective use of its time.  Every moment Strickland spends in a Cadillac showroom says something about him, but how much is new information?  Could we get the gist of Giles’ feelings of failure without repeated visits to the advertising agent who can’t outright tell him to take a hike?

It wouldn’t be a shock to learn David Hewlett’s inclusion as a displaced security chief plays a bigger part in deleted scenes than it does in the final film.  Editing warts are hard to see, though it is evident that the movie underwent some snipping, and might have minded to keep the scissors out a little longer.

Still, nearly nothing in the movie is included on accident, even if its purpose doesn’t poke immediately through.  Narrative reasons naturally exist for Giles to be a gay artist or for Zelda to have an inattentive husband.  Strickland’s cattle prod, Elisa’s hardboiled eggs, and her apartment’s calendar fulfill symbolically important purposes beyond being momentary props.

Even naming the research facility Occam plays a significant role by intentionally alluding to the popular philosophy principle.  Occam’s razor contends that the simpler of two explanations usually makes the most sense, which certainly applies to any questions presented by the film.  Where does the Amphibian Man come from?  What about Elisa?  How can these two physically different beings possibly interact?  Ultimately, the answer simply comes down to love.  Their love for each other, as well as Guillermo del Toro’s love for life presented through our culture’s shared love of cinema.  All of this endearment combines to make “The Shape of Water” the most improbably romantic monster movie anyone will ever see.

Review Score:  80

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