The Shape Of Water

Movie Review (English)

The USP of the movie is its height of imagination and then hitting the right note connecting with the audience through that imagination. The movie is a love story. Elisa, who cannot speak, is an orphan and works as a janitor in a secret scientific facility. She falls in love with a marine creature held captive in this facility.

As plans are laid for this creature to be cut up and studied, the audience becomes a part of the group that sets out to rescue him. The fact that the creature becomes Elisa’s lover follows naturally and only endears the characters.

Elisa beautifully expresses herself, “The way he looks at me, he does not know what I lack, or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am as I am. He’s happy to see me. Every time, every day.” If that is not love, what is? The sensitivity used by director, Guillermo del Toro, and the closure of the love story is simply magical.

When Elisa approaches her close friend and neighbor, Giles, to rescue the creature, he remarks that the creature is not even human. She sums it up, “If we do nothing, neither are we.”

The writing is there on the wall. Do we care?

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Movie Review (English)

Mildred Hayes, played by Frances McDormand, the protagonist, is no perfect mother. But she will not rest till her daughter’s killer is brought to book. Single handedly, she takes on the establishment and the only ones on her side are the socially oppressed. Her fight to get justice leads her to the three billboards, well, just outside Ebbing in Missouri where she lives.

The plot weaves around the lives of Mildred, her son, her ex husband, the police chief and his family, the deputy and his mother and the proprietor of the billboards. People who begin as enemies turn into friends, as circumstances change with sudden events.

Frances McDormand, as the single mother living through the guilt of being a bad mother, of trying to get justice for her daughter, suppressing her anger, her fear and again giving vent to these emotions, has excelled. This role ought to fetch her the top accolades.

Does Mildred get justice for her daughter, Angela? Well that is a question that will haunt you long after you have walked out of the hall.