thread to discuss Guillermo del Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER

There is no way that fish man did not stink to high heaven.

Did I mention how much better I thought the movie would have been had they not given the fish man magic powers, or at least saved it until the end and left things ambiguous? One of the many strengths of the (vastly superior, imo) Pan's Labyrinth is how much of the magic is ambiguous, perhaps just a fantasy for the girl to escape to. As opposed to a literal fish god who restores her gills and takes her back downstream.

i don't think "restores" is necessarily true
it's one interpretation but when i saw it i was under the impression that it wasn't even clear if she was alive or dead at the end, or had been turned into a sea creature or was dreaming in the afterlife or what?
it didn't matter to me really

picking apart the nature/"health" of their relationship is sure to ruin the movie/story
no love story can withstand relentless nitpicking

Tell my wife that etc

If she had been pulled into the water when she was near-death, then that could have imbued the moment with some poetic ambiguity. Did he save her or was this her fantasy? But after going out of their way to show his magic powers, and going out of their way to repeatedly bring attention to her scars - she could have been just mute with no backstory and nothing would have changed - there's really no way to take it but literally, imo. Also explains her instant apparently biological attraction to the fish guy.

You know, while we are talking fish attraction, there's a weird fleeting moment that caught my attention. When Michael Shannon went home and his wife immediately jumped his bones, one of the first things she does is take a deep sniff of his (intact) hand, which I took as a subtle indication that maybe some ladies just like the fish pheromones.

but there is such a thing as a smelly cat

what ARE they feeding it?!

Cats only smell bad in the mouth (smells like meat) and the butt (smells like poop)

ahhhh the tube of filth

Garbage in, garbage out.

https://i.imgur.com/q43Rd7N.png

On the topic of kids seeing this: we took our almost-12 year old to it last night. He still acts like he's freaked out by basic nudity and I did feel a bit bad about the Michael Shannon / wife scene; our son gets overly dramatic and hides his eyes, I can't tell if that's for our benefit or genuine or what. But in the end the only thing that really bothered him a lot was the cat-eating. I think that was more traumatic than anything else. He said he thought it was a good movie though. I loved it myself.

oh, and rightly he hated Michael Shannon's character. I mean sure, this character is like every other Michael Shannon character and is over the top in his awfulness...but my son (or anyone else unfamiliar with that actor's previous roles) doesn' tknow that. Sometimes you really need a non-negotiable baddie in a movie.

otm!

I liked this but I thought they really overdid telling us how these characters are outsiders and Shannon saying out loud "you really are a god" at the end was too much.

Even though it's an unusual film in some ways, the general trajectory was too predictable and it needed a few more surprises.

Highlights were Sally Hawkins and the colours (it really was like a Jeunet film) and the pee jokes. Really want to know if Hawkins used a body double and crafty cgi.

I have FINALLY watched this (better late than never...) !
Really liked it. It was funny, sweet and beautiful visually.
The story was a bit simplistic and predictable + many parts of the plot didn't really work (for instance her plan to evac the monster was silly since she could never have opened his collar without the russian doctor) but since it's a kind of tale, it's not the most important, I guess.
oh and isn't it obvious that she's pregnant after their first intercourse (the drops of water on the bus window describing a fertilization) ?
Which would also confirm that they are more or less of the same species (which would explain their instant initial attraction)...

Still haven't seen, I guess this will be library DVD as well.

Adam Nayman's seems to be the most pedigreed pan:

http://cinema-scope.com/features/the-uses-of-disenchantment-guillermo-del-toros-the-shape-of-water/

Yeah, the story and plotting let this down a bit - it felt baggy in parts, and the tension was built slightly inexpertly.

Visuals, tone, characters and performances all great on the other hand.

Heh yeah her "plan" is defiantly half-arsed, like neither characters or writers have bothered to think it through - this high-security facility should prob have considered installing at least one security camera in the actual room where the fish man is kept, for one thing

It's not really a script kinda film (see: pie shop, see also: everything)

oh and isn't it obvious that she's pregnant after their first intercourse (the drops of water on the bus window describing a fertilization) ?
Which would also confirm that they are more or less of the same species (which would explain their instant initial attraction)...

this made me lol but anything that is open to interpretation is more interesting than something that isn't imo :)

eheh, after the "raindrops on the bus' window" scene, I told that theory to my wife and she was like "wha ?"
to me it was so obvious : they just had intercourse, she's all happy on the bus then close up on the raindrops looking like sperm cells rushing towards an egg then a zygote which starts to divide !

I actually quite enjoyed this second time around, which was surprising because I *really* took against it first time round and only gave it another shot because all the positivity made me think I must have missed something, somewhere.

Weird gratuitous nudity with bad guy wife, when she gets her boob out to tempt him to sex then has her bra firmly on while they're actually doing it. All the stuff with the main character seemed entirely in context, although weird because I've most recently seen her as the mum in Paddington 2.

This was the most teal film ever though, right?

If "teal" is a euphemism for "overrated" then, yeah.

No, actual teal as in teal & orange teal. It felt like every single surface up to the point where he gets his new car (also teal, in a teal showroom) was teal (or, at a pinch, duck egg blue).

yeah, definitely teal but for once it was on purpose and related to the story (mostly aquatic).
I loved the design. It actually reminded me of an old video game : Bioshock !

Yeah, I kind of think Paddington would be a better mate than the fish.

Just wait for Paddington 3.

https://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/review/primary_image/reviews/ted-2012/hero_EB20120627REVIEWS120629973AR.jpg

very interesting (and wow "the wave" on the wall in her flat !)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7gJ5C1muo

That review linked above is pretty good.

Yeah, Nayman's Cinemascope review is excellent: informed, well-written and worth thinking about. I disagree in that I quite like the film and think it generally succeeds in its ambitions, but most of Nayman's criticisms hit their mark.

Mike d'Angelo otm:

Del Toro is the kind of auteur who conceives a cartoon sadist (every damn time, come to think of it) and decides to hire Michael freakin' Shannon for the role. Everything's a hat on a hat. It's like having someone yell "Surrender to the magic!" in your face for two hours. Maybe I could if you'd stop yelling.

Shannon has really got to stop playing the cartoon villains, or risk being Walkenized.

Or risk being someone who always gets paid?

at some point you've got enough

just get paid every other role

my red hook friends and acquaintances speak well of him as a neighbor and bar regular iirc

I'm sure he's a great person. But boy, he even looks more than a little like Walken, doesn't he?

Shannon works so much, didn't Walken's career really drop off in the 80s? I mean was he in everything after The Deer Hunter like Shannon has been in everything for the last... 4-5 years?

I hate the name of this movie, it just screams oscar bait you will forget about in 10 years.

Walken starred in The Dead Zone and A View To A Kill in '83 and '85, and some other pictures like Brainstorm that people probably expected to be slightly bigger than they were. It's only after that that his profile kinda dropped for a while. If you compare it to Shannon's side by side I feel like there's about the same ratio of "big" movies and stuff most people haven't heard of or kind of forgot about already.

It's not godawful... I'm impressed that a film can win Best Picture while resurrecting Alice Faye's biggest hit AND featuring severed fingers, ripped-open throat, etc. And still come off like Amelie Does the Gill Man.

In a Details profile published in late '93, Walken said, "An agent can't say 'Get a Chris Walken type!' I am the type. I own it. Which means I will work for a very long time."

rote-type

That quote at the top - hat on top of a hat - is perfect. This whole film screams "I Love Monsters! And Whimsy! And! And!". Gimme "Pan's Labyrinth" any ol' day instead.