Let Justice (and Love) Roll Down Like Waters — A Review of The Shape of Water

Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) looks longingly for genuine love and finds it in the most absurd fashion.

Guillermo del Toro adds to his legacy of genuinely fantastic stories (Mimic, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) with this beautifully told story set in a high security U.S. Government laboratory during the early 1960s. Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) works on the janitorial staff at the facility. She is mute and, as a result, is ostracized, living alone in an apartment above a movie theatre with only two friends, her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins). Tensions rise at the lab when Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) and Dr. Bob Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlberg) bring in an “asset” for research and testing that was captured in South America. These research findings, we discover, could give the U.S. an edge on the Russians in the ongoing Cold War. Del Toro carefully unfurls complementary story lines that develop the competitive Cold War tensions surrounding the “asset” and an unexpected love story that envelops Elisa and her community of outsiders.

While The Shape of Water is gripping and incredible on its own merits, upon reflection we realize that we have heard this story before. It parallels cinematic classics such as King Kong, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Beauty and the Beast, E.T. — any story where love in some way either seeks to bridge or actually transcends Otherness. As the two narrative threads that drive the story betray, there are two ways the “asset” is received — either as a monster or a friend. The story surrounding the “asset” reflects back on the time period of the film with its Cold War suspicions of the Other, its racial and gender segregation portrayed in the social classifications evident in the lab and a poignant diner scene, and the Otherness of same sex attraction. At the same time, of course, the story puts a mirror up to our own time with the sad, growing sense of Otherness all around as national, political, economic, racial and even personal isolationism seems to set deeper and deeper roots.

The glorious absurdity of this story; however, raises the bar on its predecessors, it seems, to put the same question to us again even more directly: Isn’t it true – as someone pretty significant once demonstrated – that generous, hospitable, self-giving love is redemptive and heals as it bridges any separation that exists between the Self and the Other? If we see and hear this story time and again, why do we fail to truly believe it and live it? Is it so fantastic as to be unrealistic, even though such love is the very thing each of us craves and desires, much like Elisa? From this vantage point, The Shape of Water is a gospel film as (spoiler) love overcomes, redeems, saves and transforms.

In this cinematic masterpiece well worth every writing, directing and acting nomination it has and will receive during this award season, del Toro gives us a most absurd and fantastic bridge to Otherness and walks us across it with a brilliant story that shocks, fascinates and compels for 2 hours and 3 minutes that feels more like 45 minutes. In a time where our Otherness is disastrously on display, will we finally see, believe and be transformed?