Who among us hasn’t wondered what it would be like to be intimate with a fish?

No? No non-human species of any kind? Alright, well I suppose I stand alone with Elisa (Sally Hawkins), the protagonist of Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (2017). Although, considering that this film garnered thirteen Academy Award nominations and won Best Picture, it can’t just be me.

It was a good year for Guillermo.

Don’t let the fish fornication dissuade you from this movie. The moment you take the plunge you’ll see that the water is fine. And we do begin in water, drifting through a submerged hallway to Alexandre Desplat’s whimsical, lovely score. Down the hallway and through the apartment door the furniture hovers in the water. Beams of sunlight frame a woman sleeping, her nightgown billowing in the water. Certainly reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty, but the voiceover narration of Elisa’s neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins) calls her “the princess without voice.” As she drifts slowly towards the ground and the scene slowly transitions to dry land, Giles informs us that this is, unmistakably, a fairy tale: a “tale of love and loss” with a “monster who tried to destroy it all.” By the time the alarm clock floats down to the table, we have left the water and entered “reality.”

Casually foxtrotting with her boy-fish...as one does.

Well, sort of. This story is a nesting doll of stories, steeped in del Toro’s affection for and knowledge of film history. Elisa lives above a movie theater. She and Giles watch musicals and tap dance along while sitting on the couch. Eliza even pictures herself in a musical, singing in an exquisite ball gown and dancing with the amphibian man, her very own Prince Charming.

Elisa is a creature of habit: she wakes up, runs a bath, starts boiling eggs, sets an egg timer, masturbates aggressively in the aforementioned bath, the timer goes off (just after she gets off; she knows what she’s doing), she packs up her eggs, she polishes her shoes, and she sets off for work. She’s a night cleaner at a secret government facility, arriving at midnight and leaving at dawn. We’re sometime in the 1960s and the Cold War is in full swing, so the secrecy and silence of the facility is paramount. Due to an injury when she was a baby, Elisa is mute, so she communicates with her two friends via sign language.

The first is her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) who talks enough for several people and has endless grievances to air against her nuisance of a husband or their job. Fore example, while cleaning the bathroom she complains, “Some of the best minds in the country peeing all over the floors of this facility.”

The second is Giles, a struggling gay advertisement artist. His fridge is full of partially eaten key lime pie because he has a crush on the man at the pie counter and insists on frequenting the establishment despite the pie’s general inedibility. The advice he would give to his younger self is, "take better care of your teeth and fuck a lot more." Wise words.

Elisa’s routine is disrupted when a strange creature from South America arrives at the facility. While the creature is a source of fascination and awe for Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) views it with contempt, scornfully saying that the locals treated it like a God. Indeed, Strickland’s favorite pastime seems to be tormenting the poor thing with his trusty cattle prod. The hobby ends up costing him a few fingers. When Elisa and Zelda are summoned to clean up the copious amounts of blood, Elisa manages to recover the severed digits and saves them in her paper lunch bag. Then, she sees him. The amphibian man appears in all his green scaly glory, their palms touch through the glass of his tank, and it’s love at first sight (it should be noted however that fish man’s eyes are downright freaky. His irises are fully black and he blinks horizontally).

Kinda cute, right?

Time for a new routine. Elisa starts having lunch with her new fish friend. She starts bringing him hard boiled eggs and teaches him how to say “egg” in sign language. She brings in records and even performs an impromptu dance with her mop as a partner. He isn’t a monster or at all, but a sentient being capable of communication and pleasure. So, when Strickland decides that it’s time to vivisect her boy-fish, Elisa decides to break him out and release him back into the sea. With the help of Giles, Zelda, and Dr. Hoffstetler, Elisa manages to sneak fish man out of the facility and into her apartment, or more specifically, her bathtub. The question is: can she get him back to the water before Strickland finds them?

An Adult Fairytale

Del Toro dubbed this movie and adult fairytale, and it certainly is. It makes explicit the sex and violence laying under the surface of the stories we grew up with. And, for all the hype about the fish sex, it's really quite tame if you get past the multi-species aspect. Elisa turns on the taps in the bathroom and plugs the door with towels. When this inevitably wreaks havoc on the movie theater below and the landlord complains, Giles bursts in on Elisa and the amphibian man holding each other. He is shining with a phosphorescent light, but Elisa is glowing just as much. The violence, though, is definitely not tame. The crowning moment of gore involves a decapitated cat, although Strickland ripping off his reattached, rotting fingers is also pretty vomit-inducing.

Such post-coital bliss

The Symbolism of Silence

One of the strengths of working within the fairytale genre is that the simplicity of the form allows for the power of the symbolism and allegory to shine front and center. It may lack nuance, but it is certainly impactful. Take Elisa and the symbolism of silence. She is mute, so she literally cannot speak, but she is also doubly silenced in society as a person with a disability. Her employer, as a top-secret facility, values her silence, and Strickland says, “When you come right down to it, I like it a lot. It kind of gets me going.” The creep likes silence so much that he covers his wife’s mouth with his bloody, puss-filled hand while they make use of their marriage bed. However, Elisa’s silence becomes empowering. She is the one who is able to communicate with her paramour-fish and teach him how to talk to her when none of the scientists could. She stares Strickland down, cool as a fresh drink of water, and signs, “F-U-C-K-Y-O-U,” infuriating him beyond belief because he doesn’t understand what she’s saying.

Giles spends much of the film refusing to listen or see the important things happening around him. Elisa puts on the news covering race riots and he says, “Change that awfulness, I don’t want to see that. I do not want to see it.” When Elisa is trying to get him to help her with her escape plan, he’s too frightened to even entertain the idea and she signs, “You’re not hearing me.” But he comes around and says, “I have no one and you are the only person that I can talk to. Now, whatever this thing is, you need it, so you just tell me what to do.” No more closing his eyes or plugging his ears. He’s listening now. A mute woman, a black woman, and a gay man: three people who are outsiders, voiceless in society, band together to help another outcast creature. They find community with each other and a place where they are heard. That’s some powerful storytelling.

Character

He's really the worst.

One downside of the fairytale genre is that it often works in character types rather than fully fleshed out people. When you’re dealing with adult themes like racism, disability, and homophobia, that’s a problem. Zelda’s character is particularly flat, and seems reduced to the stereotype of “sassy black woman.” We don’t really know much about Giles other than he’s a gay artist who likes cats and pie. And all we know of Elisa is her fairytale background: she was brought to an orphanage after she was found by the side of the river with cuts on her neck. Strickland is as bad a bad guy as bad guys get, so look elsewhere if you want a complicated villain. He’s the true monster of the story and in case the ominous score that plays when we meet him doesn’t tip you off, his puss-filled, dead fingers show that he’s rotting on the outside as well as within.

Acting

What redeems the film from the problematic character writing is the performances of the actors. Zelda may lack nuance and depth, but Octavia Spencer could be describing what she ate for lunch and I would be on board. In one moment, Giles is on babysitting duty for fish friend and he asks, “Do you know what happened to you? Do you? Because I don’t. I don’t know what happened to me. You know sometimes I look in the mirror and all I recognize are these eyes in this old man’s face. Sometimes I think I was born either too early or too late for my life. Maybe we’re both just relics.” The idea of a man old before his time, feeling like life has passed him by is hardly new. And we don’t know the specific details of why Giles feels so much regret over his life, but Richard Jenkins imbues the words with so much meaning that it doesn’t matter. The facts aren’t important. The feeling is.

Sally Hawkins as Elisa is the most stunning performance of all. When Giles is refusing to help her rescue her boy-fish, she signs, “All that 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 does not know what I lack or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am, as I am.” Again, this writing is familiar and fairly derivative. Perhaps you caught yourself rolling your eyes or wondering if you were stuck in a Nicholas Sparks movie as you read it. But, the way Hawkins performs it, it feels new. It feels like no one has ever felt the things she is feeling or said the things she is saying. The sincerity and urgency she coveys is astonishing. And she does it without uttering a sound, using only her body language and facial expressions.

Tears. Every Time.

the verdict: Watch it!

Take a swim with the “Shape of Water” and let its current take you where it will. It may not be a perfect film, but it’s a positively lovely fairytale.

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