The Shape of Water: an adult fairy-tale.

“If I spoke about it- If I did- what would I tell you, I wonder? Would I tell you about the time...? It happened a long time ago- in the

last days of a fair Prince’s reign... Or would I tell you about the place? A small city near the coast but far from everything else... Or would I tell you about her? The princess without voice… Or perhaps I would just warn you of the about the truth of these facts and the tale of love and loss and the monster that tried to destroy it all…”

Guillermo del Toro’s movie, released in 2017 and Oscar winner for best movie is almost impossible to describe: is it a cold war movie? Well… yes, it has the fight between the US and the USSR, betrayals and spies. Is it a sci-fi movie? Well… also yes, because although the setting is in the past, it has a creature analyzed by science and that has powers backed up and studied by scientists. Is it a romantic story? Yes, at the end is the story of how a couple came to be. Is it a fairy tale? Yes, of course, it has a princess, a beast and a villain. What is it exactly? I don’t know, there’s no way to shrink it down into a category or into a word. I cannot tell what this movie is, but what I can tell about it is that it is a masterfully crafted piece of art, that via cinematography, music, motives, and story, it manages to accomplish a magical journey, that although it seems pure fantasy, it transmits powerful, simple, but necessary messages about love, individuality, and society.

Del Toro has delivered us with some magical and special stories in the past, such as Pan’s Labyrinth, and this time, he managed to exceed expectations and impress everyone with his complex love story. The entire story centers around Elisa, a mute woman, and “the creature”, how they meet, fall in love, and evolve their relationship. First of all, the entire concept, and how Elisa herself puts it in the movie “The creature doesn’t see that I’m not complete, he just sees me as who I am”, I believe is great, because it explains how Elisa is seen as lower by the rest because she is missing her voice, because she is, and I quote, “the princess without voice”. In the entire movie, everyone is fitted into the standards the society had in those decades: the nuclear American family, where the father goes to work and the wives take care of their children. This standard or way of living is represented with green, aqua or teal colors, and throughout the movie almost everything fits into this palette: the lab, the clothes, the food, the jello, the car Strickland buys, everything is to belong in the American dream, but Elisa, as she is unappreciated by this system, revels at it when she meets the creature, changing the color of her clothes from green to red, from her shoes, to her hair-band, to a coat. The way Guillermo uses color as a motif really makes it very visible and understandable for the audience. The funny thing is that del Toro wanted it to be black and white.

On the technical aspect, the movie is really well shot, with great fluent editing; the shots and angles, the blocking and staging make it feel natural and give an extra layer of meaning to the film; the acting, by Sally Hawkings is amazing, and how she accomplishes to portray emotion without any words is truly remarkable, but the fact that she doesn’t talk gives the supporting characters a bigger roll and a gap to fill, which Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer do amazingly, and also the acting by Michael Shannon and how he incarnates his character is a big element in the movie because it gives it personality and vivacity; the music, by Alexandre Desplant, a great composer that works a lot with Wes Anderson, accomplishes a music that immerses you into the story, into the water and into a very moist space, and every time I hear the soundtrack I fall in love with it more and more, because it has a delicateness and touch that sets the mood perfectly; and also very important is the set design, that follows the palette at perfection and makes it look so darn beautiful.

Then, the movie talks about and criticizes the American dream and the standards of living, seeing racism, classism, machoism, homophobia, and also teaches us about “the other '', the foreign, and how scared we’re of it, how xenophobic we are. It also talks about love, and how there are no limitations for it, and it leaves us with the dark and sad truth that the monster isn’t really the creature, but ourselves, the humans.

This dark fairy-tale has one question, one thing that’s missing an explanation, the true, deeper and principal meaning of it all: why is it called The Shape of Water? Simple, what is the shape of water? Water has no shape, just as love.