I was stunned this year when they announced the winner for
the best picture category at the Oscars. How could it possibly be that a movie
whose description reads like a low budget horror film from the fifties could
win top prize? And from a director known for movies filled with comic book
heroes, monsters, ghosts and tales of fantasy? And yet it happened. Now that
movie makes its way to disc.
The film takes place in the early 1960s in a government run
research facility. Unlike most places we’ve seen in the past this location
actually employs people to do real every day jobs like clean the place up.
Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a young mute woman who works the janitorial
staff alongside her friend Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer). When not working she
shares an apartment over a movie theater with her advertising artist best
friend Giles (Richard Jenkins).
Something big is going on at the facility with the arrival
of several people. First is a scientists named Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael
Stuhlbarg), followed by special agent Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). The
third arrival shows up in a tank, an amphibious being or fish man played
wonderfully by Doug Jones. Captured in South America by Strickland the two have
an adversarial disposition to one another.
But Elisa sees something the others don’t in the amphibian
man. She sees a kindred spirit, another person who is different from the rest
and ridiculed or tortured for it. Seeing the cattle prod tipped in blood used
by Strickland on the creature she decides to reach out to it instead. She
shares her lunch with the creature, nothing more than hard boiled eggs, but in
treating it kindly she breaks through to him.
None of this is noticed by the research team. She, like
several characters in the film, are ghostlike non-entities, people who are
there but never seen by those they work among. The only person who witnesses
her communicating with the creature is Hoffstetler. But he won’t reveal this.
Why? Because he’s a Russian spy sent to gather information and possibly steal
the creature if possible.
The story fluctuates between the tenderness and bond that
forms between Elisa and the creature, the mean spirited, bitter and cruel
treatment that Strickland pushes on any and every one (including his wife) and
the characters found in the periphery here. Each contributes something to the
forward movement of the story. Giles is gay and shunned but the film doesn’t
focus on that. Blacks are turned away from a restaurant he visits. Zelda is
talked down to by her husband.
Halfway through the film the decision is made to destroy the
creature. Elisa and her friends set out to rescue him before that can happen.
They succeed and take him to her apartment where she keeps him in the bathtub.
It is here that her fondness for the creature morphs into not just affection
but love as the couple become intimate with one another. It’s become one of the
more controversial moments in the film but needn’t be coming off as more
natural than most love scenes in films these days.
But we know that the bad guy, Strickland, will eventually be
pushed to become the evil government force that thinks only of killing anything
they find. It’s a slow buildup to that point and when it happens in the third
act you know something will change the lives of all involved before the final
reel.
I’ve always been a big fan of Guillermo del Toro. While I’ve
missed one or two of his films, I’ve yet to see one that I thought was bad. He
has a visual style all his own, one that brings the fantasy realms to the
screen and makes them believable. He does that here again creating a world, a
creature and a romance between species that makes sense if that’s possible. A
fan of monster movies he turns the tables here making the hero the monster and
the monster the hero. And it works incredibly well.
The acting here by all involved is great as well. Kudos must
go to Sally Hawkins for her bringing life to a character who has no way of
speaking except with her hands, face and body language. She does so with skill.
And while he may be ignored consistently by the Academy Doug Jones brings to
life a creature that emotes through his body like no one else can. He’s done
this time and time again and never gets recognized for it. Shame on those who think
the only way an actor acts is through the language they project.
In the end the movie may not be for everyone. There is
nudity and sexual situation that mean the kids can’t sit in while you watch it.
But for adults who understand the circumstances the story revolves around and
who can find the romance beneath the makeup the movie is truly a film that will
touch your heart.
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