Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a Cold War fairy tale that earns its strangeness. Set in 1962 Baltimore, it follows Elisa Esposito, a mute janitor at a secret government laboratory, who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian and plots his escape. The film runs 123 minutes. It won the Golden Lion at Venice and later took Best Picture and Best Director at the 90th Academy Awards.
Trailer, via SearchlightPictures.
Sally Hawkins and the Amphibian Man
Sally Hawkins plays Elisa without a line of dialogue, communicating through sign language, and the performance carries the film. Del Toro wrote the script with her in mind after Fingersmith and Happy-Go-Lucky, and pitched it to her while intoxicated at the 2014 Golden Globes. She prepared by studying silent comedians: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Stan Laurel.
Doug Jones plays the Amphibian Man, his sixth collaboration with del Toro after Mimic, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy II and Crimson Peak. He told NPR his first reaction to the romantic lead was “utter terror.” He trained in a dance studio, building a character he called “animalistic, but royal and regal” — part matador. Nathan Robitaille built the creature’s voice from his own vocalizations, animal sounds and recordings of del Toro breathing.
Strickland, Giles and the Supporting Cast
Michael Shannon’s Colonel Richard Strickland is the engine of the threat. He captures the creature from a South American river, then persuades General Hoyt to vivisect it for the Space Race.
The film’s best choices sit around its leads:
- Richard Jenkins as Giles, Elisa’s closeted neighbor, whose rejection by a racist and homophobic restaurant manager turns him toward the escape plot.
- Octavia Spencer as Zelda, the coworker who joins it.
- Michael Stuhlbarg as Dr. Hoffstetler, a Soviet spy ordered to kill the creature and pleading instead to keep him alive.
The Shape of Water is not subtle, and it does not need to be. Its tagline, “A fairy tale for troubled times,” is honest about the bargain: a monster romance, a spy thriller and a creature feature sharing one bathtub. What holds it together is Hawkins, who makes silence feel like speech, and del Toro’s refusal to treat the Amphibian Man as a specimen.
The Academy’s Best Picture win remains the interesting fact here — the second fantasy film to take the prize, and a stranger one than most winners. It earned that.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
