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?