4.5 stars out or 5
In 2006, I saw Pan’s Labyrinth and was absolutely transfixed. In fact, I saw it twice, which I almost never do. Though delivering many screenplays since then, Guillermo del Toro hasn’t truly thrown himself into another movie until now. And though it took me much of the film to realize this, The Shape of Water had a similarly strong impact on me.
Del Toro loves creatures, and the set-up here is that of an early 1960s monster flick. The government has captured an underwater, uh, thing that has been worshiped as a god in South America. It’s brought to the lab for further examination… or extermination? Hey, if that’s what it takes to keep the dirty Soviets away from this discovery! Michael Shannon is delightfully off the rails yet again as the villainous G-man in charge. The reliable Michael Stuhlbarg is the scientist who hopes to protect this human-like beast.
But blowing every other actor away is Sally Hawkins as an overnight cleaning woman at the facility. Can the very British Miss Hawkins pull off playing “Elisa Esposito”? It certainly helps that the character is mute. And Hawkins dazzles in the role. She’s lonely and she’s serious, but with a (very) quiet sense of whimsy. Elisa falls hard for the Creature From the Latino Lagoon, and dedicates herself to saving him.
Through Elisa we meet other top-shelf actress Octavia Spencer, a fellow cleaning staffer and Elisa’s frequent mouthpiece. There’s also the great Richard Jenkins as Elisa’s daytime employer, a too-early-in-history-to-be-gay, down-on-his-luck illustrator.
The trailer presents this as a scary film, and those elements — including a couple of gross-outs — are handled with skill and fun. But del Toro has the last laugh, because what this really is a big love story, the most romantic movie I’ve seen in a long while. There’s a dreamy scene late in the proceedings where I became absolutely smitten with the film, and I never looked back.
Ultimately, The Shape of Water is just as much a fairy tale as Pan’s Labyrinth was. And fitting that — in this year of defeating Roy Moore — the creature in both films is portrayed by actor Doug Jones.
Jack Silbert, curator