Dr. Seuss, that devilishly witty teller of some of the most ingenious fairytales, had to say this about that wonderful, almost dreamlike thing between a couple that everyone, from Elvis Presley to Kishore Kumar, crooned about.
'You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams'.
Many a romance has captured this giddy, delirious feeling of your fondest, most sublime fantasies coming alive but it had to be only a master fantasist, a bona fide teller of some of the most ravishing and revelatory parables, to understand exactly what that legendary raconteur meant and translate it on the screen with both vivid surrealism and powerful, heartfelt empathy.
That fantasist is the brilliant Guillermo Del Toro, who has built his career in serving exotic wonder and emotionally unsettling terror. In 'The Shape Of Water', his latest marvel, filled to the brim with the potion of pure, literally naked wonder, is where he trades the crafty cynicism that marked his more Gothic and blood-splattered fantasies (the hypnotic 'The Devil's Backbone' and the unforgettable 'Pan's Labyrinth') with winsome warmth, so palpably tender that you can almost taste it.
It is also a film in which Del Toro's narrative, usually pointed in allusion and allegory, is more than willing to take a comfortable backseat and let the unabashed romance and poignant yearning take over the film, to the point of, occasionally, diminishing the director's trademark incisive edge. While those films were unmistakable grown-up horrors fashioned as fairytales, this one is instead a child's fable trying to be disguised as one for adults. That might be the only flaw in a film with so much to love (or more crucially to gaze at with wide-eyed admiration) but I will talk about it later.
'The Shape Of Water' begins, literally, like any fairytale, complete with a narration just short of the magical, promising words 'Once Upon A Time'. It is Baltimore in 1962 where Elisa Esposito, this film's archetype Del Toro princess, lives and works in almost utmost isolation. Rendered mute from scars on her aquiline neck that mar her luminous, if waif-like, looks, she is a meek, mild-mannered janitor at a top-secret military research laboratory who is, like everyone else, a victim of not just routine monotony but also disillusionment. She craves for contact, so does her friendly homosexual neighbour, the silken yet struggling Giles. And while she has a confidante in her African-American co-worker Zelda, she starts feeling alive only after the day when the tough-as-nails uniformed brutes around her bring into the lab a 'new asset'.
It seems, initially, from these initial proceedings that this is nothing else than a formula preserved in the jars belonging to Steven Spielberg; the central idea, of an unsmiling, even exasperated loner befriending a fellow hapless survivor from a wholly different world or dimension, is straight from 'E.T: The Extraterrestrial' (right down to this creature's gift of healing). But trust the devilishly imaginative director to tweak on formula in little and big ways.
What starts as a forbidden friendship with hard-boiled eggs replacing Reese's Pieces soon blooms into a swooning dance of budding love set to the swinging tunes playing from a smuggled record-player in the dim and smoky interiors of the laboratory. Not all is hunky dory, though, as evidenced by the way the director and co-writer Vanessa Taylor splashes gore, dismemberment and even bloodier stakes liberally across the frames, setting up a backdrop of the Cold War and the sweltering technology race between the superpowers as its dangerous backdrop to these simmering passions.
Visually, too, the film plays safe choices initially, with Baltimore lit up with neon glares and retro flourishes, not unlike the tinseltown served in the cinema of Robert Zemeckis but again, the most unexpected touches come in both big and small strokes. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen lets his camera serenade stylistically through the wooden corridors, chunky television screens, dank toilets and steampunk military brass interiors with both rusting metallic hues and wistful tints of sepia to lend an immersive atmosphere of both pathos and paranoia. And Del Toro has lost none of his eye for minute, ingenious detailing; eggs boil in a kettle while Elisa toys with a clock shaped like an egg and there is something disarmingly real about how she, after having filled up a bathtub with salt, lets it go with the powder falling to the floor, forgetting it all in her elation. Beautifully done.
The performances are mostly brilliant. Sally Hawkins, playing Elisa, is stunningly evocative and, almost naturally, expressive using her enigmatic wide-mouthed Cheshire grin and her probing eyes to lend even her silences with almost organic and cathartic. She bursts with effervescence but never overdoes anything, not even the sign language that the director never labours hard to exaggerate, using it only to let her communicate her deepest thoughts and desires (and in one wicked moment, a bit of profanity). Richard Jenkins is a crushingly vulnerable and warmly affable Giles while Octavia Spencer is reliably full of bonhomie as Zelda. But it is Michael Stuhlbarg's admirably prudent scientist Hoffstetler, armed with a lethal secret, that makes him, to some extent, the moral compass of the drama.
The only problem with 'The Shape Of Water' is that, when it is not being passionate, it turns predictable. Del Toro is grappling with many ideas at the same time and he finds the balance difficult to sustain; on one hand, the film is reaching out to tell us the importance of love to overcome differences and disparities not just physical but on the other, it is just too content to present us with some obvious shadowy espionage elements and a well-worn critique of military nihilism. Some of it works in places; Michael Shannon's bullying, cattle-prod wielding Colonel Strickland, this fantasy's monster, comes off also as credibly world-weary, beleaguered official bloodhound seeking some dignity from his dirty deeds. But the rest, from thick-necked American generals boasting about their stars to beefy Soviet spies chomping on butter-cake, is a bit too stereotypical for a storyteller capable of so much insight.
This is his most breezy film yet, a literal celebration of hope over cynicism and even of good against evil and yet, even with all its poetic power, one wishes that it could have been even more potent. One expects more punch from Del Toro, rather than just the spectacular punches that his superheroes and Jaegers throw around in his wildly entertaining blockbuster movies.
Still, all these considerations go to waste once we see our helpless yet blissfully happy lovers locking eyes and themselves in passionate embraces that make them forget everything pitted against them. 'The Shape Of Water' might be the most enthralling and ethereally spectacular romance in recent times, for the way it celebrates the pure, raw and fierce ecstasy and excitement of being in love and making love too. This is not just yet another watery platonic romance; instead, the director floods the moments shared between Elisa and the creature, played by regular Doug Jones, with a throbbing, pulsating sexuality that reverberates in our senses aided in no small measure by Alexandre Desplat's stirring score. And it is also frequently filled with wet, almost rippling poignancy as in the operatic musical interlude towards the end when Del Toro doffs his hat at the spirit of Hollywood romances with blissful glory.
'The Shape Of Water' is a feast of fantasy, both supernatural and sexual, served up for only those sink into love for a more glorious reality. As its name suggests, this is a film for the starry-eyed dreamers who gaze too long at raindrops on window panes so that they can conjure up beautiful shapes to linger in their mind. And no matter what another great storyteller believes in, the best dreams don't build up always to perfect shapes.
My Rating- 4 Stars Out Of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment