Movie Review—The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water

by Peter J. O'Connell   

The Shape of Water. Released: Dec. 2017. Runtime: 123 mins. MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language. 

Elisha (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman on the cusp of middle age. She leads a life of routine. Wake to an alarm clock at the same time every day. Get ready to go to work. Take a bath. Masturbate in the tub. Boil eggs to take to work. Ride a bus to the job.

That job is as a night cleaning woman at a high-security federal laboratory in the Baltimore area dedicated to research projects for the space program. It's the early 1960s, and the space race between the USA and the USSR is under way, part of the Cold War between the two superpowers. The civil rights movement also is intensifying. 

But one evening Elisa's life becomes far from routine. She finds herself in what might be called a dark, modern fairy tale. This tale is presented by director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro, a master of  mixed genres, as he showed previously in the acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth (2006).  

A strange creature (played by Doug Jones), called “the Asset,” is brought into the lab and kept under secret conditions. The creature, somewhat reminiscent of the eponymous one in the 1950s sci-fi classic movie Creature From the Black Lagoon, is a kind of anthropoidal amphibian. The Asset is under the control of Strickland (Michael Shannon), an official who brought the creature in from Latin America and treats it brutally. 

Strickland attempts to persuade the facility commander, Gen. Hoyt (Nick Searcy), to have the creature killed and dissected in the hope of learning information useful for the space program. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlberg) is a staffer at the facility who opposes killing the creature and wants to study it alive out of a love of acquiring scientific knowledge. However, Hoffstetler has “handlers” from the USSR who want him to function as a spy rather than simply as a scientist. And, like Strickland, the Soviets want the Asset killed. Their aim, however, is to prevent the US from learning anything useful by observing it alive. So, ironically, Cold War enemies actually are similar in having a death wish for the creature, though for opposite reasons! 

Before the arrival of the Asset, Elisa's main interaction with others had been through sign language chats with Giles (Richard Jenkins), a closeted gay artist who lives in the apartment next to hers—both apartments are above a movie theatre—and Zelda (Octavia Spencer), an African-American woman who works with Elisa at the facility. 

But Elisa's curiosity leads her to make covert contact with the Asset. She starts feeding him eggs, teaching him sign language, and caring for him in various ways. After a time a kind of romance occurs. It is as if the “ugly duckling” Elisa becomes a princess and sees the “frog” as a prince. The real monster in the tale is not the creature but Strickland, even though with his Cadillac, suburban home, Stepfordian wife, and two kids (one boy, one girl), he is ostensibly the epitome of normality. And Hoffstetler's Soviet spymasters also are morally monstrous.

Eventually, the members of various marginalized groups—women, the disabled, African-Americans, gays, idealists—come together to try and save the most marginalized being of all, the Asset, who really is an asset because of the virtues that he has come to show in his relationship with Elisa. The climactic events are exciting, and del Toro's combination of science-fiction, romance, thriller, and social drama is consistently enthralling throughout.

That combination is carried out with superb cinematography, dark but luminous, and performances—the brutality of Strickland, given a deep, inner layer of self-doubt by Michael Shannon; the friendly and forthright qualities imparted to Zelda by Octavia Spencer; the conflicted but courageous approaches given their characters by Richard Jenkins and Michael Stuhlberg; the humanity imparted to a nonhuman creature by Doug Jones. Above all, the mesmerizing, almost magical, ability of the wonderful Sally Hawkins to create, in a completely convincing way, a middle-aged maiden in love with a merman. This review will not disclose if the story ends “happily ever after,” but viewing this fine film should make anyone happy.