My wife and I finally went to see The Shape of Water yesterday. It’s a movie I had planned on seeing the moment it came out, and really wanted to have seen it to include in my Top Movies of 2017 post (In fact, I plan on updating that post and placing this somewhere in the list, I’m just unsure where to place it right now), but suffice it to say life got in the way that prevented me from seeing it until now.
The Shape of Water is directed by Guillermo del Toro and stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer and Doug Jones.
Sally Hawkins place a woman who is mute and works as a cleaner in a science facility in the 1960s where a captured aquatic creature is brought to be studied. While cleaning the room where the creature is kept, she comes in contact with the creature and develops a relationship with it, by teaching it to communicate with her in sign language. At the same time she witnesses the torture to the creature by the man in charge of the team (played by Michael Shannon) that has brought it there to be studied.
This movie is visually stunning and is filled with great performances by everyone in the cast. Every character in the movie is dealing with the feeling of being unfulfilled and incomplete in their life in one way or another, and you can tell this is one of the central themes of the movie.
So let me just state, this IS a love story. There are moments where some of you may feel a bit put off by moments in the movie. If you have seen the trailers for this movie, it’s an obvious giveaway about that, so just go into it with that mindset.
Overall, I think I really did love this movie. It contains a lot of what is missing in most movies today, and that’s simply great storytelling. It definitely fits into my top 10 movies for 2017 (even though I saw it in 2018, it was released in 2017 so it goes somewhere in that list). It is a beautiful and stunning picture to look at.
There are a couple of things that I wish could have been done differently. The scenes at the facility showing the relationship grow between Sally’s character and the creature seemed to be a bit rushed, and quite honestly I thought “wait… don’t tell me the movie is already near the end!”, but I was pleasantly surprised by the second half of the movie. I felt a bit silly to think that the whole movie WOULD be based at the facility.
Overall, on my inflections of suck scale I would put this movie at a level of:
“Yeah man, this movie did NOT suck!”
– Keith
Keith Richie 