Fantasies and monsters are part of the film world from its beginnings. In 1896, Georges Méliès in one of his first works- Le manoir du diable, brought the first incarnation of Mephisto, which later became an increasingly frequent phenomenon in his films. Although the monsters were part of the film magic of virtuoso Méliès, their popularization came with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau who in 1922 represents the magnificent and frightening vampire count of Orlock in the film Nosferatu.
In the years that followed, more and more directors wanted to revive many literary monsters on the screen, or to create new ones, so Count Orcott, Count Dracula, Frankenstein Monster, Werewolf, Invisible Man, Godzilla, soon became involved in the film world. Lagoons and many others. Interest in these creatures grew through the thirties and forties, and reached its peak in the fifties. The sixties brought new ways of intimidating the audience with grotesque characters and visually more explicit depictions of violence. The consciousness of the viewers has changed, demanding more complex stories and even more distorted characters, so the "black and white" monsters soon became a thing of the past.
The tradition of film monsters, however, never extricated to the end, in every decade it's possible to find one or two new directors who have a special love for this genre. The most famous person who keeps monsters alive is definitely Guillermo Del Toro. His adaptation of comics to the film, and the unforgettable fantasy worlds he has created so far, has brought to this Mexican director and his works a number of prizes - from Venice, via Cannes to BAFTA Awards and Oscars. The Shape of Water is the latest work of this virtuoso and one of the first films this year that can be said to be asserted on a list of nominations of the Academy Awards.
The year is 1962, the Cold War is under way, and Russia is currently winning the world championship game. What could have reversed the outcome of the war and brought a great advantage to the Americans is the unique "amphibian man" of the river Amazon (Doug Jones), whom the South American tribes glorify as God. Therefore, the US Army, with Lieutenant Strickland (Michael Shannon) as the head of the expedition, brings the monster into a Baltimore military base with the goal of exploring and indoctrination.
In the base, among a lot of employees, there is mute cleaner Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), who never fit into the world that surrounds her. Elisa grew up in an orphanage, and the only thing she knows about her past is that the police found her in the Baltimore harbor with wide scratches on the neck, of which she still has scars. When one of Strickland's attempts to tamper with the monsters goes astray, a cleaner and an amphibious man face face to face. Elisa soon begins to notice how much likeness she shares with the incredible creature from Amazon.
Del Toro stated that The Shape of Water represents to him the realization of a teenage dream to adapt 1954 film The Creature of the Black Lagoon by his own rules. Taking a series of archetypes - from an incomprehensible protagonist, through a comic African-American assistant and a broken gay artist to an ideal soldier of the American army or an oath of Russian spy, Del Toro remains consistent with the tradition of monsters films, but also by creating them new horizons.
Thus, in the first scene of the film, we have the opportunity to see the incoherent protagonist Elisa leaping out of her archetype of innocence, watching her sinful sexual instincts and the unusual fetishisation of water. The film gives us the opportunity to understand what drives the ideal soldier Strickland, watching his life outside his work. Misery rooted in a harmonious American household, fear of failure, the desire to realize the American dream in front of us, is served in a series of comic scenes.
Directors comment on the status of homosexual and African American people in the Cold War period is partly expressed through minor dialogue scenes or through references that are in the background of a more important scene. Looking at the way the American military relates to the "slimmass man from Amazon," the impression is that the creature is an absolute personification of the anti-American ideology of the sixties, and therefore must suffer the pain of all marginalized social groups.
It's a movie that at all times honors film history. Most of the references are rather subtle, transmitted through dialogues or movements of the body, as if the director largely refrained from making us in the fear of all these powerful classics. Nevertheless, Guillermo Del Toro gives a blow to moments when he runs the homage to the movie Top Hat. Somewhere before the end of the second act of the film, the crazy shades of the futuristic green color with which the film abounds, become black and white. Nina Elisa, leaves her comfort zone and openly shows emotions singing "You'll Never Know (Just How Much I Love You)". Then he takes the hand of the monster and the two begin to dance in the style of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
It's also worth mentioning the relationship between the two protagonists for which the performances of Doug Jones and Sally Hawkins are credited. The eternally masked Jones, which we had the opportunity to watch in earlier Del Toro films (Mimic, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth), gave a new life to the classic movie monster. His performance of an amphibian man successfully balances between the two extremes of the creature, the fragile, rational human nature, and the inner god of fury. On the contrary, Sally Hawkins was able to convey to Audrey Hepburn vibrate in her acting. Probably the strongest accent of these two performances would be the the body language that is more often transmitted than speech and sign language.
The Shape of Water has brought to us the most beautiful fantasy world of Guillermo del Toro, in which there is a simple story about the liking of the other. At the same time raising the film's past and implementing the sociopolitical context of today, the famous director has created a unique monstrous love letter for film art.
This is my translation from Croatian to English from Ziher hr article ''Pronalazak u drugome'' by A.Fatic