The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water is a fantasy (and somewhat science fiction) drama film directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (of tv and movie fame, she wrote for seasons 2 and 3 of Game of Thrones). The film follows a mute custodian woman working in a security government facility, where she befriends and falls in love with an amphibian creature. Think creature from the black lagoon except this creature is way too cute and human-like. 

Anyways, the plot is simple enough. The woman frees our amphibian dude from the lab where she falls in love with him, and they even have sex! She has a great ass by the way and the film has a bit of sexual sensuousness. There's a couple scenes where we see her masturbating, always in the tub full of water. But I digress. 

It must be said with utmost authority that actress Sally Hawkins (who plays Elisa the lead female role) makes this movie, the monster doesn't add much. Her acting is so lovely, so pure, and in the scene where she was singing I got caught up in her poetic elegance. Back to the story. 

So she frees him (the monster) and the bad guys from the facility eventually find out she has him. The bad guy shoots our amphibian and our girl, and they both die. However, the amphibian heals himself, surprise! He has a healing factor! What is this Logan? After he heals his bullet wound in a second he slashes our bad guy across the face, killing him instantly. If he was this god-like and powerful why was he chained up and beaten so easily earlier in the film? After that he takes Elisa (our girl) and jumps into the river (they were at a harbor where he was to be transported elsewhere but plans got sent to hell), where a sort of magikal realism occurs.

At this point we can choose to believe that a) Elisa gets killed and that the monster turns her scars into gills, thus turning her into a sort of reverse mermaid or b) the monster grabs Elisa and jumps into the river, and what we see is an illusion scene of love, fantasy, and romance, showing that Elisa's love for the monster has transcended human nature, that she has become like him, thus the gills. Either way its quite an interpretative ending, albeit a lazy one. 

Another complaint is that the monster was too damn cute and puppy-like. A true monster by definition has to be ugly, perhaps even disturbed in some ways, think Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This monster was not a 'true' monster, in fact, other than him eating the head off a cat and killing the bad guy, he was hardly monster-like. Instead, del Toro relies on a cutesy Disney sort of love affair, effective enough for Best Director and Best Score at the 75th Golden Globes but it doesn't satisfy me in any realistic way. The film tries to allow Elisa to transcend human nature with this love story but it doesn't get the nitty gritty down right. The devil's always in the details. 

However, I can see why this movie is such a success. I can see why women and girls especially like it a lot, it is very much a romantic type of thing. This is the kind of movie you would bring a date to, or your girl friend, perhaps even your wife if she's open to different kinds of movies. Its quite good and I enjoyed it very much but the monster isn't really a true monster, he's a sort of cute puppy dog, which I can see why the girls would like the film and the creature. 

Giles: [interpreting Elisa] 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. He's happy - to see me. Every time. Every day. Now, I can either save him... or let him die.

La Jetee

La Jetee is a French short science fiction film made in 1962. It runs at about twenty-eight minutes. The movie was a big influence on William Gibson, one of my favorite science fiction writers. The story focuses on a man as a child and adult who is watching planes take off at an airport. He sees a woman there. The last thing he remembers is seeing the woman and in that moment he knew that he saw a man die, but this is all he can discover from this. Eventually the world becomes engulfed in darkness, a sort of nuclear apocalypse perhaps? In the end we learn that what he saw was actually his own death.

Later he wakes up as an adult in this underground city, called galleries in the film. There's these scientists that are doing experiments on people so that they can go to the future to find a technology that can restore the world of the past. They decide to use this man because the strain of going to the future is hard on the mind. They think that because this guy is so attached to this idea of his youth, that moment described above, that his chances for doing it will be greater. So they put some stuff over his eyes and conduct experiments on him. In these experiments he meets (in a sort of other world) the woman he saw at the airport as a child and he comes to have a romantic relationship with her complete with jokes, conversations, and numerous hangouts every time he goes through the experiments.

Eventually during one of these experiments our protagonist finds himself in the world of the future, where the people have this black dot stuff (not all of them were dots, some were other shapes) on their foreheads. The future civilization people give him a technology that can restore the past and prevent impending doom. So he goes back to the dystopian present where his mission is completed, thus saving humanity.

Upon his arrival our main character figures out that these scientists are going to kill him. The aliens of the future ask him if he wants to leave that time permanently and go with them but the man instead asks to go back to the past so he can meet the woman. They agree to do this.

So he goes back to the past at the airport. He knows he is there as a kid. He sees the woman and just before he gets to her he dies, killed by a government agent that works for the scientists. What a movie!

The movie brings to mind a bunch ideas. Time is inescapable. Try as we might we are all subservient to time, we bend to its will in a way. We think we understand the past but we don't totally get it. Instead, we find ourselves in the hear and now, an important concept in Zen Buddhism, which I've read a little about. 

It also brings to mind the idea of dystopian modernism. If the Earth got flattened by nuclear war we would probably build cities underground, a popular idea in many science fiction movies. The surface would be contaminated by nuclear waste and we wouldn't be able to live in such nice places anymore. As the movie said we would become lords of rats.

There's ideas of utopia thrown in there as well, The scientists in the present think that the world in which they live is so horrible that they have to keep conducting experiments that probably harm peoples' minds because they want to regain what they had lost, their precious happy-go-lucky past where parents take their children to see airplanes take off at the airport. What a precious and happy thought.

Lastly, the film brings up romance. Ultimately our main character becomes attracted to the woman and keeps wanting to see her. When he finds out he's going to be killed, instead of going with the future citizens he asks them to send him back to the past so he can find the woman. When he does this it shows that he loves the woman, perhaps may want to spend the rest of his life with her. He could have gone to the future and lived the life of a revolutionary but instead he chooses love.

There you have it. A short science fiction film that displays tons of great ideas and all with still photos! I can see how and why something like this would influence William Gibson. These ideas are still portrayed in movies and talked about to this very day. You could even say that some of the virtual reality things I've been blogging about and reading are sort of related to this-science, dystopia, utopia, love, futurism, and the modern dark ages.

You can watch the film here.

Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they become memorable by the scars they leave.