I was mesmerized the entire time I watched Guillermo del Toro's ravishing adult fairy tale, "The Shape of Water." I loved the look of it, the old movie clips throughout, the way they spontaneously break into song (especially Alice Faye singing "You'll Never Know Just How Much I Love You",) and the lavish song and dance number featuring Eliza and the Fish Monster, to name a few favorite moments. The film is menacing, cruel, funny, romantic and highly symbolic.
It also depicts the monster as a loving Christ-figure, just as so many other films have - like"Beauty and the Beast" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," to name a few. It's easy to see that del Toro was deeply affected by the 1950s film "The Creature From the Black Lagoon."
Why is it we want to kill the one who comes to save us? The one who is different. The Other.
Except for one totally disgusting scene between and man and his wife, sex in this film is not the violent, selfish kind we're used to seeing in movies made for adults. Instead, it is total love.
You know I love Redemption movies. This is not so much that. It's more of a "New, abundant life" movie.
P.S. Spoiler Alert: At one point Dave leaned over to me and said, "did you notice those scars on Eliza's neck look like gills?"
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