Tag: The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water film review *****

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The Shape of Water, 26th February 2018

I have to confess I wasn’t that interested in seeing The Shape of Water, (I am pleased with my little conceptual joke here). The trailers suggested this was likely in a similar vein to Guillermo Del Toro’s previous gothic horror/romance/fantasy films: lovely to look at but tedious to watch. Yet the reviews were persuasive, Sally Hawkins is a tip-top favourite of mine and I was getting into the swing of seeing all the Oscar nominated films in the manner of a sad armchair critic.

So off I went. Dear reader, I was bewitched. This is not, on the face of it, a complicated fable, but it has a lot to say. Sally Hawkins plays Eliza Esposito, an orphan who has not spoken since being found on a riverbank with scars on her throat. She works as a cleaner at Occam, an aerospace military research facility in Cold War America. Our symbolic “monster”, a merman/amphibian of sorts, direct from the Amazon, arrives. So far, so Del Toro. Class A psycho nutjob, Strickland, played with splenetic relish by the versatile Michael Shannon, is tasked with looking after the creature, which he does, cruelly. Restless scientist Hofstetler, (an austere Michael Stuhlbarg), objects, but, as a Russian spy, he has ulterior motives. Eliza, through that tried and trusted combination of eggs and music, falls in love with the creature and hatches a plan to release him, roping in kindly, gay, commercial artist neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) and voluble colleague Zelda (another engaging performance from Octavia Hill). You can guess the rest.

Good triumphs over evil, naturally and there is thrill, if not suspense, in the break-out. This is a timeless story. Beauty and the Beast, set against a world of US-Soviet paranoia. You can feel the references to other classic films, even if, like me, you don’t know what they are. There is an echo of the silent movie greats as well as a nod to the monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed Eliza and Giles actually live above a cinema the Orpheum (courtesy of Toronto, as so many of the exterior shots are). It is chock-full of repeated motifs and symbols. Mr Del Toro has a hand in the writing, but has wisely co-opted Vanessa Taylor, who wrote some of the early episodes of Game of Thrones. It shows. There is a hard-edged realism which punctures the fantasy and lends structure to the story.

Unsurprisingly the film looks exquisite with blues and greens predominating and all sorts of arresting images wrung from Mr Del Toro’s box of tricks. Water, water, everywhere. Costumes from Luis Sequeira, Paul Austerberry’s designs, Alexandre Desplat’s inventive score and, especially, Dan Lausten’s cinematography, all coalesce to bring the story to life. Frankly though none of this can work if the two, effectively wordless, performances of the two leads don’t convince. Getting zipped in to a merman/amphibian suit for hours on end and trying to convey emotion through face and body movement alone is a job few can master. Just as well Mr Del Toro has his long time “monster” collaborator, Doug Jones, on hand.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Sally Hawkins is a gifted actress. I saw her first in 2000 in a pair of Shakespeare productions at the Open Air Theatre. was struck by her performances in the TV adaptions of Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and Persuasion, by her collaborations with Mike Leigh and, most impressively, by her performance alongside Rafe Spall in Nick Payne’s Constellations. The two of them turned that into a much better play than it really was, and it was pretty good to start with. Here, as Eliza, she is transcendent. I don’t care how grizzled and cynical you are, this is a love story you should buy into.

So there you have it. I am fortunate to have had the time to see all the Oscar nominated best films, bar Call Me By Your Name. I enjoyed all of them, but only this, Phantom Thread and Three Billboards … really seemed to me to harness the power of cinema. Films where you know the direction of travel or where the camera is just pointed at the action can be satisfying but what I crave is uncertainty and surprise. And insight into the human condition. I see the other films I really liked last year would fail to make the grade because they are either a) “foreign”, b) tiny, in budget, not scope, c) actually from the prior year or d) maybe a bit too full on. I would have shoved Mother!, Detroit and The Florida Project into the list if I where in charge. Mind you, all pointless since Three Billboards … is, unarguably, the best of the chosen bunch but, to my immense surprise, The Shape of Water, runs it close.

I should have realised. Never underestimate a fat bloke born in 1964 (or 1963) with a terrible beard and ill-kempt hair who spends too much time locked in his imagination.

The Post film review ****

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The Post, 8th February 2018

If it was down to me the Academy Award for Best Picture would go to Three Billboards. No question. I see the bookies just about agree with me though The Shape of Water, which I have just seen, and which, to my surprise, I was bowled over by, is offering stiff competition. Mind you, if it was down to me, Ruben Ostlund’s The Square would be in the main list and the distinction between English Language and “Foreign” would be abandoned. And there might not be any Oscars Night at all since it offends my puritanical, armchair Socialist sensitivities, and because Hollywood churns out so much shite despite so much money.

As an aside I am reminded of an unwittingly hilarious documentary we saw once in the US about Foreign Language Syndrome. All sorts of Middle America types waking up and finding themselves talking gibberish in a dodgy accent rather than true Red American. They all sounded like Russian spies in some woeful Adam Sandler “comedy”. Anyway it transpires that FLS is only documented in the US which, you might have thought, would have raised the suspicions of the various medics on camera. But no. Earnest to a fault they insisted on the verisimilitude of this absurd condition. Only in America folks.

Anyway The Post I see is a rank outsider for an award. Which must irk the producers immensely what with it being a perfectly correct, very serious, liberal indictment on the shocking cover up of the Vietnam War exposed by the Washington Post, and, to be fair, other newspapers in 1971. A vital subject, top drawer direction from Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep effortlessly munching up the lead roles, (first time they have acted together apparently), and a supporting cast to drool over. And make no mistake it is a very, very good film. It is just that it is a teensy weensy bit predictable, even if you don’t know the history, which means any tension slowing drains away through the duration of the picture.

Ms Streep plays the redoubtable Katherine Graham, who reluctantly becomes proprietor of the paper after the unexpected death of hubby. She is daughter of the founder which helped. The regional paper is going public so cue so well crafted scenes of banker types and her Board colleagues treating “the woman” abominably. It also means no boats must be rocked prior to the flotation or the dastardly investors will diss the stock (unlikely; they know what they are buying). Meanwhile ex-military analyst with a conscience, Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), gets his hands on incendiary material, the Pentagon Papers, showing how successive administrations lied about the progress of the War. The New York Times is barred from publishing. The Post, led by steely editor Ben Bradlee, (yep Tom Hanks), steps into the breach. No electronic files here. The editorial team steps in and paper literally starts to fly. Lawyers get nervous, Board members eschew idealism, Government gets mean. Ms Graham’s bessie Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) is part of the problem. Hanks makes rousing speeches about journalistic integrity and press freedom and Streep is galvanized, sticks it to the old white boys and says “publish and be damned”. Not literally.

It is a powerful and beautifully made, (filmed in 35mm for vintage effect), and should be seen. It is a class act as you might expect given its creatives. There are a lot of beautifully set up scenes which get under the skin of the newspaper business.  It obviously has A MESSAGE for these troubled times what with “fake” news and an incompetent/unscrupulous political economy, (though trust me human history is littered with “dark times”).

I have to say though I found myself more involved by Spotlight from a couple of years ago in a similar vein. Just that bit grittier. Josh Singer (West Wing) was the writer there as he is here, in tandem with Liz Hannah. So what’s the difference. Well it’s Spielberg. The man literally cannot frame a limp scene or tell a bad story. And that may just be his curse.