Article written by Michelle Contarino.
The Shape of Water is an American Drama/Fantasy film created, produced and directed by Guillermo del Toro, a name you may have heard behind other renowned productions such as Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy and Pacific Rim. The storyline follows Elisa, a mute young woman employed as a curator at a government laboratory in Baltimore 1962, who becomes romantically involved with a humanoid amphibian man that is being held captive by the facility during the time of the Space Race.
Okay, I'll come right out and say it. I did, in fact, think this film was going to be like Twilight (an obscure romance that would make me leave the cinema halfway through). Truth be told, I didn't walk out. I stayed glued to my seat throughout the entire film and when it was over, I wished it had never ended.
Yes, as you've probably gathered by the trailers, a woman has sexual relations with a dude who looks like a fish. Does this mean the film is a waste of your time? That is, of course, up to you to decide, but I'm here to hopefully prove why this film is an experience that everyone should at least try taking a dive into.
The first thing I would like to discuss is the main character. Cliché, I know. Who doesn't talk about the main character first in these kind of articles, right? Alas, there is a specific reason why I'd like to start by discussing the main character (other than the obvious fact that it's the main character). The reason being, is that our main character is mute.
I could hedge a guess at what you're going to say, how is that relevant? Well, it's pretty much relevant to the entire storyline. It's the leading factor in what makes this movie so unique – at least, in my opinion. I felt Elisa's presence infinitely more compared to any of the other characters. Crazily enough, even more than the humanoid amphibian man. The way she moves, how she communicates, her outlook of everyday life is refreshing. I could lump it down to the fact that she is the main character, that she is meant to be strongest presence in the movie, although I believe her muteness makes her character so substantial.
Elisa's interactions with the humanoid amphibian man – let’s call him Abe, good old Hellboy reference for you right there – are moments when her muteness really shines through. These interactions bring out the initial importance of her character's disability. The first scene I would like to pay particular attention to is the simple, although charming, boiled egg scene.
When Elisa first meets Abe, she tries to communicate with him and hands him a boiled egg, which he warily eats. Through many other future interactions, she continues to feed him boiled eggs. Eventually, he learns how to pronounce the word 'egg' using ASL (sign language). The film does an excellent job at making the boiled eggs central to the storyline. The beginning of the movie shows Elisa boiling eggs, something the viewer quickly discovers she does every day, and as the film progresses the boiled eggs become a distinctive symbol of the connection Elisa and Abe share.
The second – and I believe the most emotional – scene that makes Elisa's muteness essential to the storyline is the scene where she tries to persuade her friend, Giles, to help rescue Abe from the laboratory before he will be dissected. This specific scene hit me exceptionally hard, and it was the scene that made me realise why director Toro had decided on Elisa's character being mute for this film.
"What am I? I move my mouth, like him. I make no sound, like him. What does that make me? All I am, all that I've ever been, brought me here to him. When he looks at me, the way he looks at me, he doesn't know what I lack, or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am, as I am. He's happy to see me. Every time. Every day. Now I can either save him or let him die."
The fact that her words are not spoken aloud, that Giles voices her words in a resigned tone while she uses her hands and expressions to display the pain she feels, makes this scene more poignant than it would have been if she was not mute. It's the moment in the film where the viewer sees the main character and her connection to Abe for what it really is. A scene capable of heart-breaking and heart-warming reactions.
Now that I have somewhat explained the central main character of the film and the profound influence Elisa's disability gives to the storyline, I wish to examine our main character's… let's say, her nemesis. Particularly, his personality and how this plays a part in shaping the film's intention. Behind all of the sentimentality between Abe and Elisa, lies a rather unfortunate human trait – something I'd like to call the human god complex.
Our character, Strickland, and the government he works for, both possess this trait. It is especially prominent in Strickland's behaviour towards other people. He is a business man who has a family, although it is clearly seen that he lacks the 'family man' trait and would rather be known as 'the man of the house' in an egotistic sense instead of a typical, familial sense. He pays no mind to his family when he is around them, unless it's to benefit his authority. The scene where he puts his hand over his wife's mouth while they have sex is not a scene I viewed as passionate and loving, more so a scene where it showed Strickland for what he was – a control-obsessed individual who hungers for power over others.
Two specific interactions Strickland has with Abe are pivotal to the god complex trait the film illustrates in his character. The first interaction is when Strickland mocks the fact that the natives and the Amazons worshiped Abe as a god while torturing and taunting him. This scene almost has a continuation at the end of the film, where Strickland shoots Abe and Elisa before Elisa can release Abe into the seaway. Abe slits Strickland's throat, but not before Strickland manages to gasp out, "F**k, you are a god", affirming a fact he had found absurd previously in the film when he was too absorbed in his own god-like position of power. These two scenes bring the film's depiction of humanity, the "conquer what is unknown" hive-like mind, into focus.
Overall, the film manages to encompass the human god complex and the human capacity of kindness, both of these through different characters that view the world in contradictory ways. This film awakened me to a side of humanity I see every day in civilisation, mostly on the news and on social media. The Shape of Water is not just a romance, but a life-lesson that reveals the beauties and cruelties behind our humanity. It teaches understanding in the face of what is strange and unfamiliar. The ability to see things for what they simply are, not just what they can do for us as a human species.
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