Academy Award Winner: Best Picture – 2018
The Shape of Water is a fantasy love story about an amphibious god and a mute woman, taking place during the Cold War era. It’s a very simple movie that seems to draw some inspiration from The Beauty and the Beast tale. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The Shape of Water is filled with glorious scenes of cinematography and color.[/perfectpullquote]
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, and Octavia Spencer. Sally Hawkins plays a mute middle-aged woman named Elisa who lives alone and works the night shift at a Navy research center near DC. Her neighbor, played by Richard Jenkins struggles with both his sexuality and his art career. Elisa and her neighbor Giles find comfort in each other during various struggles in this film.
Michael Shannon plays an eccentric antagonist who is set to torture and kill the amphibian man.
The Shape of Water is filled with glorious scenes of cinematography and color. The story is a little weak in the fact that we have no idea why the government wants this thing or what Elisa’s backstory is. There’s a lot of moving parts put into this two hour movie, but by the end, we’re left wanting more information about what just happened.
It’s easy to see what The Shape of Water won this year’s best picture award, but all in all it proved to be a weak year in terms of everlasting classic movies.
Who should see this movie? Fans of fantasy love stories, people who like the previous work of Guillermo del Toro, and if you want to see what the best movie of the year is.
Who shouldn’t see this movie? People who can’t grasp the fact of a “human” loving a “beast” and children because of sexual content.
Score
8 / 10 – A great movie overall, still not convinced it was this year’s best. After watching The Shape of Water you might find yourself saying “That was weird…”.
Spoilers
Caution! Spoilers ahead.
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It’s revealed in the end that Elisa may not be completely human after all. She is mute, experiences her sexuality in the water, and has gills, just like the beast. As I mentioned before there is no publicly available backstory for these characters, but Guillermo del Toro wrote 40 pages of back story for each one. Hopefully someday we’ll get to see those to clear some things up or maybe we’ll see a prequel.