Guillermo del Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER (Wins Best Film and Best Director)

If you have seen THE SHAPE OF WATER, how would your rate it?


  • Total voters
    54
WTF is going on with Cinemark? It's not showing this movie this week, next week, or the week after. Neither is the smaller theater just outside of town.
Not released until 12/22. There are a few limited screenings in majors cities, for award buzz.
 
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Really looking foward to this one. Im a big fan of GDT. I even like crimson peak.... most people hate that film and for good reason the story itself is kinda boring and predictable but its one of the most beautiful looking films and sets ive ever seen. the main hall in the film was pretty much one big set and talk about detail...
 
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@Anung Un Rama

Since you are one of the few who have seen this movie let me ask you a question.

I just saw it and I'm struggling with my thoughts on the film. One thing that I am pretty confident in saying is that I'm not sure I bought the actual relationship between Elisa and Amphibian Man. Going to use spoiler tags for the next few sentences
The scenes with her and him are fantastic. I like watching her feed him eggs and teach him sign language but I felt the jump from that to them having sex was so abrupt. Could have used more scenes to flesh this out a lot more

There was also some subplots that never go anywhere. It felt tarantinoish by just adding pointless stuff to the movie
Elisa's neighbor Giles and his pie stuff was very weird. The entire subplot of him losing his job and trying to get back into the company. Him trying to have sex with the guy from the dinner
What was the point to any of that? Why did Del Toro want to show us all this Giles stuff that leads to absolutly nowhere. Take all that stuff out and add more Elisa and Amphibian Man scenes.




I hope you agree with me Anung especially on that last part

I think the movie is a fantastic movie really but there are some really questionable decisions going on.

I want to rate this movie a 9/10 but I cant for the issues I talked about above. I am going to go 8/10 on this one.
 
A normal director wouldn't add scenes to a movie that are pointless

They show you the stuff they do for a reason

I want to think that there is some hidden meanings behind all this Giles stuff. There is a throw away line that he is a drunk and other stuff I noticed. He is also the guy who narrates the movie

I think it is worth paying more attention to on a second viewing
 
@TheRuthlessOne

Giles is Elisa + voice - agency. Like Jenny's to Forrest's his journey reflects the darker, real path of being different and suffering injustices due to prejudice. It's no coincidence
He too hides in plain sight.

Their journeys combine when he finally joins her mission right at his lowest point, when he's got no other options.

GDT has a curious sensibility of not sugar-coating social and domestic issues smack dab in the middle of high fantasy. It's one of the less marketable traits of his cinema. But also what makes his shit pretty special.
 
@Anung Un Rama

Since you are one of the few who have seen this movie let me ask you a question.

I just saw it and I'm struggling with my thoughts on the film. One thing that I am pretty confident in saying is that I'm not sure I bought the actual relationship between Elisa and Amphibian Man. Going to use spoiler tags for the next few sentences
The scenes with her and him are fantastic. I like watching her feed him eggs and teach him sign language but I felt the jump from that to them having sex was so abrupt. Could have used more scenes to flesh this out a lot more

There was also some subplots that never go anywhere. It felt tarantinoish by just adding pointless stuff to the movie
Elisa's neighbor Giles and his pie stuff was very weird. The entire subplot of him losing his job and trying to get back into the company. Him trying to have sex with the guy from the dinner
What was the point to any of that? Why did Del Toro want to show us all this Giles stuff that leads to absolutly nowhere. Take all that stuff out and add more Elisa and Amphibian Man scenes.




I hope you agree with me Anung especially on that last part

I think the movie is a fantastic movie really but there are some really questionable decisions going on.

I want to rate this movie a 9/10 but I cant for the issues I talked about above. I am going to go 8/10 on this one.

Re: Spoiler 1:
She was a horny broad who has lived a relatively solitary life for who knows how long. She had her gay, self absorbed neighbor (who probably was only just recently spending quality time with her since he got dumped/ fired) and her work friend, who was probably just that. Not only that, but she obviously had an affinity to water -- so she had a king/ sexual imagination. On top of that, there was a connection that we can't really explain, but it was there. I do think it could have been fleshed out more, or even just paced out, instead of going right for it.

Re: Spoiler 2:
I definitely would have prefered more Elisa/Abe Sapien, but Giles' story was important, because his story added another layer ot the narrative. He's a gay man who most likely lost his job because he was a "sexual deviant". He was alone/ isolated because he was perceived ad different. The flirtation with the diner guy was a similarly desperate maneuver to Elisa's, except he only imagined the connection and forced it (something I think more people can actually relate to than meeting their soul mate at the aquarium).

Zelda was important, too, for the same reason, only as a black woman. Elisa was also a single woman. So there was that feminist bent that was actually really appropriate and fitting in this movie (as opposed to a lot of the stuff that is forced these days).

There is probably an even deeper, more subtle, poetic layer, that @Secret Agent will notice when he sees it.

LIke you I really like this movie, and like you I felt something was off that keeps me from giving it a great score. I think it was because the movie tried to be do many things, and I don't mean what I discussed above. It didn't seem to know if it was a drama, comedy, romance, or monster movie -- any one of which could have told the story just as well. You mentioned QT, and the difference is, QT is great at creating a vibe in his movies and maintaining it throughout the multiple storylines. The vibe changed in this one from one scene to the next.
 
I loved this film, but there were some holes re: Elisa/Abe and Giles.
Just felt like they may have cut an extra 10-15 minutes of film, imo.
 
still havent seen it yet cause its still limited release and my theaters suck... i keep hearing mixed reviews but overall people seem to mostly like it. id love to see GDT try his hand at another comic related property something like hellblazer, man thing, sandman, terror inc, lobo, moonknight, werewolf by night ....something where he can really go crazy and push the limits of what he seems to be able to create visually. of course it helps if you have a good story. i know he was talking about doing mountains of madness for a long time and now fantasic voyage hopefully this movie makes a good amount and funds some of his other projects.
 
film was cute.

Only downsides for me were

1. the V.O: "how should i tell this story/where do we begin?"

Or:
"Here's where I might say they lived happily ever after. I could say a lot of things about her, but what should i say?"

blatantly hack trope unless the actual mode of retelling or recalling the events is shifting, or majorly comes into play: it did not

2. Every step of this film could be seen coming from a mile away. Very few legitimate narrative surprises.

3. Creating a fantasy sequence where
your beautifully mute protagonist starts singing is just giving their disability the middle finger. That's like making a film about a protagonist you grow overwhelmingly comfortable with being wheel-chair bound who suddenly starts breakdancing in their dreams
 
3. Creating a fantasy sequence where
your beautifully mute protagonist starts singing is just giving their disability the middle finger. That's like making a film about a protagonist you grow overwhelmingly comfortable with being wheel-chair bound who suddenly starts breakdancing in their dreams

I thought it had something to do with Lizard man being able to heal people

I thought she was going to get her voice back fully

Whats with the scars on her neck?

I know they found her orphaned in a body of water(in a lake I think) maybe thats where it happened

But I get the feeling that this was kind of in her destiny to meet this Lizard man. Water has been a key factor in most of her life.
 
I'm getting a ...

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feeling to this
 
I thought It was great. It was almost like a adult fairy tale, or beauty and the beast in some ways.

I did think it was interesting that there was a family with young kids sitting next to me, and the wife starting screaming at the husband, when the first bathtub scene occurred. Kids were asking "mommy what is she doing??" as the dad says he thought it was like a pixar movie.... But they stayed and watched the whole movie.
 
Watched this last night.

Hmm. . .

Here's what I've seen from GDT:

The Shape of Water
Pacific Rim
Crimson Peak
Hellboy I and II
Pan's Labyrinth
Blade II

I think that I LIKED all of those films, at least marginally, but I'm not sure that I LOVED any of them. Probably the one that I like the most and find the most rewatchable is Pacific Rim. That is in fact the only GDT movie that I own on Blu-Ray.

With all of his movies though, I tend to find so much of them so well done. He's very imaginative, his stories tend to feel fresh and original, the production design for his films is ALWAYS amazing . . . but there just seems to be something missing. Every damn time there is something about his movies that feels cold and emotionally distant and I have a problem fully engaging. The result is I end up getting a little bored.

This is also true for The Shape of Water, except this time the problem is compounded by a strange plot that I found myself cocking an eyebrow at. A mute woman falls in love with a sea creature and engages in a sexual relationship with it? What exactly is GDT trying to say here? I'm thinking it must be some kind of allegory but for the life of me I can't really figure it out, and I don't think I have enough interest in the story to try.

I'll give it a 7/10 but that is largely due to how strong the movie is OUTSIDE of the narrative.
 
GDT films are always at odds with themselves and what happens is that he carves out a small but dedicated cadre of movie fans.

Usually, his films are regarded as too expensive for the story and scope. Plus, his love of the macabre doesn't translate well to the audience, because it's mired in the largely saccharine tone of his films. To the point it's hard to get on board with interspecies lovemaking, no matter how romantic the visuals might be.

SHAPE OF WATER has a lot of different speeds that do not gel well together, in terms of conventional film making. While it is true that breaking convention is innovative and should be applauded, it is those same conventions that help us swallow the less palatable elements, elements we may not have been ready for.

All of GDT films are hard to classify the first time around (he's deeper than just "Fantasy"), and thus it's hard to temper expectation, and without knowing where we're going in a film it's hard to maintain interest. Unless you're into all of that shit that he's into. I do maintain, however, his films are good enough to be rewatched even when his full intentions are mysterious. There's a wealth of spectacle and some great poignant moments that cannot be denied, and will grow and evolve with each revisit. Of the great directors, GDT strikes me as the closest to the kind of author whose books you read every year. Like Portis' TRUE GRIT (except TRUE GRIT hits the ground running in everyone's hearts, the first time they read it).

There's a lot of different things happening in SHAPE OF WATER that all don't exactly come together to form like Voltron.

Lovely little lovesong, though it may be.
 
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