Movie Review: "The Shape Of Water"

"The Shape Of Water": A-.  I had decided not to see The Shape Of Water unless it won the Best Picture Oscar this year.  The genre in which the media and advertisers placed it, science fantasy, is not attractive to me, although I am a big fan of the leading female actress, Sally Hawkins.  As luck -- good luck it turns out -- would have it, the film did win the top prize, so I dragged Momma Cuandito, who was also somewhat reluctant, to the theater.  We both loved it.

Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute custodian who works in a secret government building along side her co-worker and interpreter, Zelda (Octavia Spencer).  The building is a high security facility, where secret experiments are conducted with the aim of giving the United States an edge in the Cold War.  One of those experiments involves the incarceration of a man-like aquatic creature who is restrained by chains in an indoor salt water pool.  Like Elisa, the creature does not speak, but through gestures, body language and facial expressions, he obviously is keenly aware of her kindness toward him.  Secretly, Elisa finds time to visit the creature, while her friend, Zelda, covers for her.  Elisa did not have a man in her life, but now she does... sort of.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Elisa and Zelda, two chains of action are in the works which will spell trouble for the creature and his new-found friend.  Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), the army officer who captured the creature out of a South American river, is ordered by his superior to perform a biological experiment which will result in the captive's death.  Ordinarily one would think that receiving such an order would give a man, even a military officer, pause, but not Colonel Strickland.  He does not put up an argument, partly because of his rank and partly because he is probably psychopathic.  An objection to the planned demise of the creature is raised, however, by a scientist, Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), which leads us to the second "chain."

Hoffstetler, although he works in the facility's secret lab, is actually a Soviet spy named Dimitri Mosenkov.  He is the most conflicted character in the story, having to take orders not only from Strickland but from his Soviet handlers who also want the creature killed for their own competitive militaristic reasons.  In quick succession, Elisa learns of the U.S. Army's sinister plans for her amphibious friend, and with the help of Zelda, Mosenkov and her next door neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins), she frees the creature with a daring escape and hides him in her apartment.

The stage is now set for the budding romance between Elisa and the amphibious "man" to evolve, but how long can she successfully hide him before he is either recaptured or perishes due to absence from his natural habitat?

At first blush a story of a romance between a woman and a non-human being sounds creepy, if not disgusting (not to mention illegal).  But hats off to writer-director Guillermo del Toro for keeping things on the up and up.  Doug Jones, the actor who plays the amphibious creature, certainly deserves more than a nod too.  If the viewer is willing to accept that the movie is, indeed, a fantasy, the love story will probably not pose a problem.  Actually, I had a harder time accepting that a bathroom could completely fill up with water merely by turning on the bathtub faucet, stuffing a washcloth in the drain and plugging the gap between the bottom of the door and the bathroom floor with a towel or two!

Hawkins turns in another first rate performance, as I knew she would.  The combination of her entrancing eyes and smooth delivery of sign language enables us to guess with a high degree of confidence what she is feeling and communicating in her own way.  On the other end of the spectrum, Shannon makes a terrific villain, one of the most sadistic in recent memory.  His use of a taser stick in a couple of scenes is hard to watch.  Even the side characters, those portrayed by Spencer and especially Jenkins, add beneficial supplements to the story, although a certain scene with Jenkins sitting at the counter in a pie shop should have landed on the cutting room floor.

Two of the Academy Award Oscars went to del Toro for direction and Alexandre Desalt for his amazing score.  The latter wrote twenty of the twenty-eight songs sprinkled throughout the movie.  I find it interesting and disappointing to compare the performances of Sally Hawkins, who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar but did not win, with Frances McDormand, who did for her performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (reviewed here on December 23, 2017; B+).  Without uttering a single word, Hawkins' Elisa conveyed love, curiosity, kindness, concern and bravery.  McDormand's Mildred Hayes was a foul-mouthed, aggrieved, monotone and mostly boring woman.  Apparently that is what the Academy voters were looking for.