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…
In a monster movie of this scope, you get your first hints of how important the human characters are from the early exits of Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston and from the limited lines of Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins.
Oh, yeah – David Straithairn, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Elizabeth Olson are also in it.
It’s a good cast, but the real star is…
Godzilla (duh). It was produced by Legendary Entertainment and Warner Brothers and directed by Gareth Edwards. Let me say here that Edwards really gets his special effects right in all of the movies under his direction that I’ve seen. His visuals are realistic enough to make my mind race. Okay, monsters 350 feet tall aren’t realistic, but if they were, it’s not hard to imagine them looking like this. He does a good job of blending his CGI with real backgrounds and real foreground objects. He also makes good use of imperfect focus where needed. All of this keeps the CGI from looking too much like CGI.
So let’s get the negatives out of the way. Yes, the science is ridiculous. What did you expect? For me, the complaints that Godzilla wasn’t prominent enough in his own movie were greatly lessened with repeated viewings. Near the end, the time to get the nuke away from San Francisco is insufficient, but Christopher Nolan also made a similar mistake in The Dark Knight Rises. What do we watch monster movies for most: the plot logic or the imagery? The MUTOs (massive unidentified terrestrial organisms) that everyone complained about are actually pretty cool themselves, and the associated sound effects really work. This movie is just plain kid fun, and it does a good job of encapsulating and paying homage to past Toho movies while re-imagining the original concepts.
Okay, here’s a plot synopsis. A MUTO hatches out of a type of chrysalis that scientists from MONARCH are studying, and then it escapes.
Another one comes back to life. Later, Godzilla appears, and there’s a HALO (high altitude low opening) drop which inserts some outmatched soldiers into the area.
Then, in a totally unexpected plot development (just kidding), there’s a big fight. This leads to what I considered the coolest sequence of the movie…
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…
PNEUMYTHOLOGY 