The Shape of Water is a magical. wonderful experience

If you’ll indulge me, I’m going to have a meta moment and write about writing. When I did this professionally – that’s what the title of the blog is about – I always found it harder to deal with good films than bad ones. With a poor film like The Mercy you just pull on the heavy boots and go up one side and down the other, as I did in my most recent blog.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel; a licence to snark.

With a good film however it is more difficult. The temptation is just to say ‘This is great, go and see it’. That however makes for a very short blog, also there are only so many ways you can praise the film before it looks like money may have changed hands. This is where I find myself with Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, hence my meta musings.

It’s great, go and see it.

If you want me to expand on that then you should go and see it because it is the closest thing we’ve had in the past few years to a piece of pure cinema. It relies on the magical alliance of image, sound, and setting to create a thing of wonder. Since both main characters are mute it also takes us back to the sublime eloquence of the best of silent cinema.

Del Toro’s story is a ‘sequel’ to The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), the last – and for me the best – if the Universal monster cycle. In this film an amphibious creature, The Gill-Man because he is half-human, half-aquatic being, is discovered in the upper reaches of the Amazon.

The Shape of Water is set indeterminately in the 50s/60s, presumably Eisenhower’s America, although there are musical cues from the 30s and 40s, when the creature – here referred to as The Asset - has been captured and brought to a secret installation to be vivisected and presumably militarised. Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a cleaner in this facility – mostly she has to clear up the consequences of other experiments. Elisa is mute as a result of childhood abuse so presumably can be relied upon not to tell anyone what she sees.

Elisa meets The Asset (Doug Jones) and is drawn to him. Their scenes together have a dream like quality as two mute characters who can only communicate through sound and movement begin to form a relationship. When she discovers that The Asset is being tortured by Michael Shannon who, with his handy cattle prod, is the embodiment of the military-industrial complex, Elisa decides to release him.

She is aided in her quest by her two friend; fellow cleaner Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) a gay commercial artist struggling with his sexuality and the fact that his work is no longer fashionable. This trio of marginalised outcasts take on the might of the military industrial complex because it is the right thing to do. There is also a subplot involving a Russian spy (Michael Stuhlbarg) which drives the action at a fair old clip and prevents the film from being overly sentimental.

The Shape of Water is essentially a classic fairy tale with erotic overtones, a mood it shares mood with the 1954 film. If you take the scene where Julie Adams is swimming in her virginal white swimsuit while The Gill-Man swims unseen, underneath herm mirroring her movements, there is a strong and obvious sexual subtext.

Del Toro has taken a classic Beauty and the Beast theme and given it a political edge. In the process he has created an adult fairy tale in all senses of that phrase. His great strength as a director lies in the conjuring of worlds and settings which are totally compelling. His last two films Pacific Rim (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015) perhaps overdid it, but The Shape of Water echoes Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) in its creation of a setting which not only allows the story to unfold, but adds to its resonance.

Cinematographer Dan Laustsen has crafted a colour palette in various shades of green, from the murkiness of the government motives to a wonderfully optimistic opalescent quality in the magnificent closing sequence. Likewise the production designer Paul Austerberry has created a timeless setting where nothing seems out of place or anachronistic thus encouraging the suspension of disbelief. The final ingredient is Alexandre Desplat’s music which I normally find overly sentimental but strikes the right mood exactly here.

The Shape of Water is complex narratively but del Toro handles the story with guile and craft. A generous director, he gives each of the supporting characters a properly realised story arc. He is rewarded with some lovely performances, not just from Hawkins and Jones, but also, especially, from Richard Jenkins as well as the others.

Three Mexican directors – del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu – have had a profound impact on 21^st century cinema. Del Toro is the only one not to have won an Oscar but I would expect the Academy to overcome its historic aversion to this genre and remedy that in a few weeks.

The Shape of Water is great. Did I mention you should go and see it?