Okay. This is very cool. The Shape of Water (2017 Fox Searchlight, directed by Guillermo del Toro) won some Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards, including for Best Director and Best Picture. I watched the WHOLE THING, all three and a half hours of it, just to see how this movie would do. The high point for me was the announcement of Best Picture at the end. As a member of the cast, my brother got to stand on the stage with the whole group, and I am so happy that he got to experience this.
Here he is with his wife, Laurie…
.. clowning with Sally Hawkins…
… with Guillermo del Toro…
… and giving an interview the day of the event.
Here are a couple of bonus pictures taken on the set during filming.
Way to go, Doug! From your rather obscure brother…
Watching The Shape of Water (2017 FOX Searchlight, directed by Guillermo del Toro), I noted with interest the brief sequence when Elisa Esposito (played by Sally Hawkins) offers a boiled egg to the Amphibian Man (played by Doug Jones). When I saw him take the egg and dive back into the water, I flashed back to a family vacation about five years ago. We were in Corolla on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I was body surfing (not very well on my part) with my brothers Rich and Doug, and he used the same diving form that I saw him use in this movie.
Before I get into what I want to say most, let me mention that the directing and acting were superb. Additional cast members Octavia Spencer (as cleaning lady Zelda Fuller), Michael Shannon (as repulsive bad guy Richard Strickland), Richard Jenkins (as neighbor Giles), Michael Stuhlbarg ( as scientist Dr. Robert Hoffstetler), David Hewlett, and others did a superb job in playing their roles and adding their individual facets to this gem of a film.
Lest I give the wrong impression, this film earned its R rating. I estimate that the scenes which made me uncomfortable amounted to about fifteen minutes of screen time, and I would have preferred to have seen that time devoted to a more extensive portrayal of my brother’s character and more transitions in the development of his relationship with the mute cleaning lady.
A number of social issues were covered in this period piece, and if the film had one major weakness, it might be that it tried to do too much. I personally prefer to see fewer themes developed more fully.
Now for the things that really impressed me besides the fine acting. This is a unique effort in that it is a blend of monster movie and art film, which is evident from the opening credits. Just to see it, I had to drive a hundred miles to an art house where it was playing in Kansas City. The musical soundtrack is used so effectively that it seems like an additional character in the story. I like that this is a relatively low budget film that nonetheless has unique and stunning visuals. It’s a beautiful piece of cinematic work.
Overall, I’d say that this is a fairy tale disguised as science fiction. The Amphibian Man is more than a monster. He represents an almost spiritual longing, that ache for something wonderful and unexpected which will overtake us.
I think people long for the unusual and the mysterious, for something beneficial that is ultimately beyond our control. That which we can manipulate is that which we have an unfortunate tendency to disrespect and take for granted.
Thank you to those of you who tuned in/logged on to see my brother, Doug Jones, play Lt. Saru in the new Star Trek series. Now that you’re in the process of completing that assignment, let me direct you to go see The Shape of Water when it is released this December 8th.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, this is an interesting looking movie (warning: R-rated for language, violence, nudity, sexuality) which by its trailers looks like a science fiction, Cold War period piece, art flick. I am reminded of Pan’s Labyrinth, in which Doug also worked with Guillermo.
The cast is excellent, including Sally Hawkins (Godzilla) and Octavia Spencer (The Help, Hidden Figures)…
… and a bunch of other good actors such as Michael Shannon (Man of Steel) …
… Richard Jenkins…
… and David Hewlett.
It is the character of Elisa Esposito played by Hawkins who appears to be the focal point of the story. She is a mute cleaning lady who works in a lab facility and who forms a relationship with an aquatic, hominid creature imprisoned there.
I’ll be interested to see where they take this. I expect it to be beautiful and possibly disturbing given its rating. Of course, living in a town as small as mine leaves me with no guarantee that the film will be showing in a local theater. I might have to wait until it comes out on video to review it. Until then…
I’m feeling a bit wiped out by the tedium of posting chapters of my book, Alias Adam (FOR FREE), so I’m going to try getting by with mentioning Star Trek: Discovery, which aired last night with its first episode. I understand that all subsequent episodes are on CBS All Access (Netflix internationally). I’m mentioning it because Doug Jones, my youngest brother, plays Lieutenant Saru, the alien science officer (obviously to the left in the above picture).
I see no need to review the first episode since it is being reviewed to death on a great many other sites. I just want to mention that I’m proud of my brother and excited by the potential of this series. The special effects are good, the franchise storied, and the cast diverse. I don’t expect it to be anything less than a cultural hit.
For another post on Doug, check my Family Mythology category in the black strip on the left. I expect to post about him again under that category as well.
As I get ideas, I will contribute posts to this new category that occurred to me recently. I thought it would be fun to examine images based on ancient mythology and relate them to multiple media today. This will NOT be a scholarly analysis. Instead, I will deal with surface impressions and similarities: eye candy and an intellectual break. At least that’s the plan. Since time marches swiftly on, let’s start with Hermes.
Souls on the Banks of Acheron by Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl
He is the Greek messenger of the gods, and he likes the fellowship of human beings. He seems to enjoy interacting with them, as he does in The Iliad by Homer He also intervenes for Odysseus on behalf of Zeus in The Odyssey, also written by Homer. The above painting is an interesting composition in which he is relatively easy to identify. Below, you can see a photograph of a Roman marble (sculptor unknown) from the Louvre which shows him in an interesting pose.
Hermes Fastening his Sandal
Of course, the Romans actually named him Mercury.
Mercury and a Sleeping Herdsman by Peter Paul Rubens
Based on the original, Golden Age appearance of this next character, it is obvious that he was inspired by traditional depictions of Mercury. As in the case of many comic book heroes, a “scientific” rather than a mythological explanation is given for how he obtained his powers. This combination of science fiction and mythology is one of the features that make good comics so much fun to read. Back to the immediate subject at hand, The Flash is a fixture from my childhood, only not in this particular form.
It is the Silver Age Flash with whom I grew up. By then he was wearing a more streamlined and form-fitting speed suit which was strangely prescient.
For a relatively brief time, life imitated art as elite sprinters in track and field wore body suits made of Lycra.
The Flash has been updated a little in more recent portrayals. You can see in this and other drawings that he is more mesomorphic and that the artists have played around a little with the uniform. As with most DC Comics updates, this character is also angrier. Of course, there have been a number of successors to the original character in the extended story arc. I’m not making any major revelation by mentioning that The Flash has his own television show on the CW network.
My brother, Doug Jones, did a guest appearance as the villainous Deathbolt on one episode. He also played the same role in Arrow, also on the CW.
I really like this homage by Alex Ross to the Golden Age appearance of The Flash.
But I like pretty much anything by Alex Ross. He really trips my imagination. At any rate I saved this image for last. More next week.
p. s. I almost forgot. Not to be outdone, Marvel Comics also has a superhero with similar attributes. Quicksilver was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee for the X-Men series.
Still shot from Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro.
Doug Jones is one of the top creature actors in the motion picture industry, and he is also my youngest brother. I am proud of him, and I have no qualms about continuing the nepotism I began in last week’s post where I wrote about the work of my son-in-law. Doug began perfecting his technique long before he knew what his profession would be. As a boy, he was a spot-on mimic of me, my other brothers, and our father. When he entered his teens, his caricatures became even more accurate, their aim deadlier.
As stated on my Author page, I am a small college professor of biology. In the faculty break room a number of years ago, one of my colleagues mentioned that he had seen Doug in Pan’s Labyrinth and that he thought it was good. I acknowledged this and attempted to pass it off so as not to appear conceited, but he stopped me. He really thought this movie was good, an excellently conceived and executed fairy tale. This continues to impress me because my friend taught a class in Germanic Folklore and another in Film Studies, and he was not easily impressed. Doug himself had told me that he was very much aware during filming that he was participating in a work of genuine art.
The story itself is a well-constructed mythology set in Spain during time of war. There is, of course, another theme I always like in such stories: a relationship with a child (in this case, a young girl). In addition to portraying the title character (the fawn) my brother also played the Pale Man (Pallido Hombre) with the eyeballs in his palms.
Still shot from Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro.
Trained as a mime, Doug knows how to make the prosthetics of creature acting work effectively, and he brought these characters to life by body movements and facial expressions (even under heavy makeup) that convey emotion. He also learned his lines in Spanish (which he does not speak) so that the voice-overs would be convincing.
Okay. Enough fawning over the fawn played by my brother. I have longer gallery posts about Doug (Beneath the Monster and Post Mortem) on my other blog site (MORE THAN MONSTERS). You can read these by clicking here and here. You may also view a documentary about Doug Jones by clicking here.
With Doug at a recent family vacation in Brian Head, Utah.
PNEUMYTHOLOGY 