Picture Perfect: ‘The Shape of Water’ is a modern classic

Perfection in cinema can be difficult to spot right away. What separates a great movie from an excellent one is that you’ll keep coming back to the excellent one long after you’ve watched it. You may be done with the movie, but the movie isn’t done with you. In most instances, that can linger for weeks or even months.

The longer that movie lingers in your mind, the better the movie. This is why I often have difficulties with saying whether recent movies are truly excellent. While I truly loved films like “Parasite” and “The Green Knight,” it’s too soon for me to say if I think they’re perfect.

Their greatness is still settling in. Film is like wine – the best ones get better with age, and the bad ones age poorly. This is my way of saying that I don’t have too many recent films that I consider perfect. I try to not let recency bias consume my opinions.

However, there are a few films released in the last few years that are exceptions. In fact, there’s one in particular that has touched my film lover’s heart and has become one of my favorite movies of all time: Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (2017), which one four Oscars, including for best picture and best director, among 13 nominations.

Even though it’s been less than four years since I saw the film, I have no problem saying this is one of the greatest fantasies of all time. “The Shape of Water” is built on the passion and raw, unbridled love of movies in its purest form. Every shot of the film is gorgeous, perfectly thought-out to the point of visual poetry.

The music is phenomenal as it adds an even bigger emotional weight to the story, which is where fantasy and reality blend together flawlessly in a way that only del Toro can articulate. And of course the performances range from stellar to some of the most emotionally captivating acting I’ve ever seen. It is an excellent example of why we adore cinema.

The biggest reason it works so well is because of del Toro’s vision. He has always taken high-level fantasy, sci-fi or horror and brought it down to a personal, often emotional level. He did this wonderfully in “Pan’s Labyrinth” but perfected that with this movie.

He’s an avid cinephile, especially of monster movies, and often found himself sympathizing with the monsters over the human characters trying to stop the monster. The biggest example of this is “The Creature From the Black Lagoon,” where the titular monster has his home invaded and is ultimately killed for wanting love.

In del Toro’s eyes, the Gil Man is not the monster – the human invaders are. “The Shape of Water” is a retelling of that story but from the Gil Man’s perspective while focusing far more on the love story.

The film follows a mute woman, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who works as a custodian at a government laboratory. One day, Col. Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) brings in a top secret and highly dangerous creature that he found in the Amazon – a manlike creature that can live on both land and in the ocean.

He hopes to study the creature (namely through dissection) in the hopes of gaining some advantage for the Americans in the Cold War. But Elisa becomes fascinated with this creature and learns that she can communicate with it. Over time, they develop a close, even romantic relationship while Strickland starts to get wise to what they’re doing.

While del Toro’s unique vision and personal touch drive this movie, there’s another aspect that makes it exceptional – Hawkins’ performance. All of the acting in this movie is great, with Shannon giving a truly menacing, unforgettable performance, while Richard Jenkins brings a surprising emotional core.

But none of them hold a candle to Hawkins, who says so much without ever saying a word. From her introductory scene where she’s taking in the joy of even the smallest aspects of life to her emotional breakdown while explaining why she has to rescue the creature, Hawkins is acting her heart out in every scene.

She carries so much emotional weight in her raw, unbridled passion for life that I found myself crying at nearly three different points in the movie, especially during her fantasy moment with the creature. As strange as that scene was, it is probably my favorite moment in the movie.

Over these last four years, I’ve only loved Hawkins’ performance even more. It has become one of my favorite performances in any movie of the last decade. When I think of “The Shape of Water,” one word comes to mind: joy. A joy for fantasy, a joy for cinema and especially a joy for life. And isn’t that what excellent movies should do?