Review of The Shape of Water (2017) by Erik R — 10 Feb 2018

"The Shape of Water" is one of the best films I have ever seen. The performances in this film are brilliant, with a unique female lead who cannot speak and must communicate with sign language.

One of the things that works really well in this film is the way that it takes certain genres or certain norms in film and it will flip them upside down. For instance, Elisa (Sally Hawkins) falls in love with the "asset" or the Amphibian man (Doug Jones), the film takes a departure from the classic monster-romance film and Elisa is the one who makes a transformation into a "monster" or mermaid as the case may be. This up-ends our classical representation of a monster-romance such as "Beauty And The Beast" in which a beast is civilized by a woman.

Another thing that is done so well that other films attempt but fail to succeed in is that it calls back to different styles of performing arts. The Gene Kelly-like dream sequence that covers a large portion in the "second act" if you can call it that, reminds us of the time of musical theater adaptations. This is done masterfully, while not startling an audience with a palate for action and thrills. The dream-sequence is completely in sync with the tone of the rest of the film.

There are certainly many more great things about this film that I could go on writing for hours - but these were the highlights whichever stood out the most to me. Go see this movie, you won't regret it!