The Oscars ceremony is the event of the year in the world of cinema, and in 2018, The Shape of Water was one of its main protagonists. Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is known for his particular way of mixing fantasy and reality, fascinated from a young time by monsters, he has always tried to lead us to a poetic fantasy where appearances deceive.
Thanks to its aesthetic brand, it manages to captivate us visually and, in the case of A Forma da ‘gua, not only stays in the visual and aesthetic, but goes further and accompanies its particular fantasy with a different discourse of love. We need a speech today that invites us to embrace differences and challenge social barriers.
- The Water Shape is a kind of Beauty and The Contemporary Beast.
- Updated and improved.
- The Beast doesn’t have to become human and Beauty is not a princess.
- Although it is a fantastic film.
- Del Toro brings great plausibility.
- Transporting us to the 60s and approaching very real and close characters.
- This way of mixing fantasy and reality.
- Of making us believe faithfully in what we see and the magic that the scenes and music transmit make A Forma da ‘gua the must-see film of this year 2018.
History seems to have always rewarded white, western, strong and powerful men; everyone else was relegated to a lower level, women, homosexuals, immigrants, blacks . . . they have all found themselves in the shadows and their fight for equal rights has been delayed (and continues to be). Guillermo del Toro defines himself as part of that otherness, a Mexican living in the United States. No matter how good a filmmaker he is, he cannot remove that immigrant label.
In addition, from a very young age he was considered a special person, different, fascinated by fantasy and endowed with a great imagination, which took him to the top of the world of cinema. Cinema can break down barriers (or make them stronger). , has the power to change the world, to conduct a political discourse in a society-friendly tone. Guillermo del Toro pays homage to alterity with A Forma da ‘gua, embraces differences and breaks down barriers.
The film begins by introducing us to a woman who lives alone in the 1960s and who, despite her loneliness, seems happy and starts her routine every morning before going to work: she prepares food, cleans her shoes and masturbates in the bathtub. normal woman, and some scenes loaded with great naturalness contrast with the fantasy of the film. This woman, named Eliza, is mute and orphaned, but that has not prevented her from achieving her independence. Eliza works cleaning a secret government lab. There begins a friendship with an African-American colleague named Zelda.
The two women represent the lowest point in the laboratory hierarchy, are women and also work in cleanliness, white and powerful men occupy the highest step, and are considered insignificant, and Eliza is stupid and Zelda is African. -American, which will not improve your situation. Next to them is the friend of Eliza Giles, an old gay artist who lives with his cats. These three characters are a reflection of alterity and, throughout the film, we will see very uncomfortable and difficult situations that they have to face: racism, homophobia, machismo?
In the midst of the Cold War and at the height of space conquest, a strange being arrives at the laboratory captured in the Amazon, a place revered and treated as a deity, this being has characteristics very similar to humans, yet it is an amphibian. Eliza will discover it and feel some weakness for the creature; she is an incomplete human (she cannot speak) and the strange creature observes her without prejudice, unaware that she is unable to speak. There’s a very special bond between them.
This strange being will be targeted by the Russians and Americans, mistreated and want to kill him for further study. On the other hand, Eliza, with her friends and a Russian spy working in the lab, will do her best for in this case, the heroes will be of alterity and the powerful will be the real monsters, a political discourse in the middle of a fantasy world. Not only do we find alterity in the most realistic characters, but also in the amphibious man, who will be the end of alterity in alterity, a unique, different and therefore tortured being.
The color gamut chosen for the film brings us closer to an aquatic world; The cold colors, the green and blue tones are constant, from decoration to clothing, everything revolves around water. The title itself is curious, because water has no shape, like love. Del Toro explained it on more than one occasion. that the title is an allusion to love, to a love that does not understand forms or barriers.
Del Toro also acknowledged that the film was a thorn that had been nailed from a young age when he saw The Black Lagoon Monster, a similar plot, but in which the monster and the girl did not end up together, Del Toro did not like it, because he identified with the monster, that strange and different being that created revulsion to most mortals , for him this type of love story must be consummated, must prove that love does not understand barriers, and that anyone can fall in love and fully enjoy love.
In this way, the form of water appears, where the beast does not need to humanize or become a prince to enjoy his beloved, and at the same time, the woman does not belong to royalty nor is she an inaccessible being of extraordinary beauty, a woman who fights and who uses hes.
Despite appearances, the most monstrous character in the film is Colonel Richard, the man who captured the “monster. “A powerful and ambitious character who despises everything he doesn’t look like.
There is a very significant moment in which he tells Zelda about the monster and dares to say that “God created us in his image and likeness”, in reference to the fact of the “monster”. He doesn’t deserve any respect. He also says that God looks more like him than Zelda and, without explicitly saying it, we see him as completely racist, which clearly indicates that God must look a lot like a white man.
His abuse of power also leads him to despise women, to object to him, we see abuses against Eliza and also a relationship of absolute dominance with his own wife, Richard has a very clear hierarchy, first white men, then women and finally all. the real monster?
The shape of the water leaves us with a sense of hope, far from other more tragic films of the filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro invites us to abandon prejudices, to take advantage of this fantasy that opens us to the different, something more than necessary today.
“When I think about it, everything that comes to mind is a poem. “