The Shape of Water

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > The Shape of Water

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

I was expecting to love this film. It's.... okay. I mean, it's pretty good.

It really suffers from never giving the fish-man his own strong characterization. They do a good job bringing out everyone else and what drives them, but the fish-man never graduates out of being simply alien. He ends up the flattest part of the film. I wish they'd given him perhaps a bit of a sense of humor, or reticence, or something. Perhaps they pushed the prosthetics too far. Doug Jones as Abe Sapien was still able to emote quite well with his mouth, but in this one he was really limited to his hands, which had also been built up so much you didn't get his characteristic hand performance.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2017 04:16

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:05

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

Malcolm Excellent posted:

Was this basically an Abe Sapien movie without the license?

No because Abe is cute and can communicate in entire sentences and is definitely human-level intelligent.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2017 18:40

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

Yeah, even his body language is pretty staid.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 05:56

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

He actually came across as very heavy to me, and slow, which doesn't play to how Doug Jones tends to act. Abe, for example, got a lot of characterization from the way he used his hands and his lithe fidgetiness.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2017 19:14

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

MeinPanzer posted:

Watched this again last night.

What struck me this time was that while I've seen this movie criticized because the fish man didn't really have much personality, I think that was the point. On second viewing he comes across as much less human than I'd previously thought, and when, for instance, she starts to sign to him that he won't know how much she loves him and then begins singing, he barely seems aware of what's going on and his only comment is "egg."

With this viewing I thought a lot about the criticism that the movie presents Eliza as being unable to connect with another person, sending the message that the disabled can only really connect with other outsiders. What I picked up on second viewing though was that Eliza is in fact objectifying the fish man, just as Michael Shannon's character objectifies her. The fish man has affection for her, but most of the time he just seems curious about new things; his intellect basically seems to be that of a child. Just as Shannon's character declares that he likes the fact that she doesn't speak, she likes the fact that the fish man can't speak; but just like Shannon's character, she doesn't actually really know anything about the person she's pining after. She presents herself as only being able to connect to this other differently-abled entity, but in fact she is not really being honest with herself about why she feels that way.

I also caught this time that the framing device of her neighbour's commentary really casts doubt on the ending -- for all he and Zelda know, the fish man healed himself, killed Michael Shannon, and disappeared into the depths with Eliza's dead body. The last scene really comes across as a fairy-tale ending slapped on to satisfy the audience, with the neighbour's comment strongly suggesting this ("If I told you about her � the princess without a voice � what would I say?").

Well okay, but if that's true then the commonly perceived message is a complete load because a woman and her gay friend save a fish and she delusionally rapes it while it goes around killing whatever seems to be small and made of meat. Though that's not an inherently unworkable premise as such, it would be stating that the cattle-prod status quo was actually Correct and Good. If that's what the film really wanted to say, I can't say it succeeded there either.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2018 15:42

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > The Shape of Water