What you didnt understand about The Shape of Water
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When a reporter recently asked filmmaker Guillermo del Toro how he tells monster stories, being “the joyful and loving person” that he is, he simply responded: “I’m Mexican.”
The director’s latest film, “The Shape of Water,” demonstrates the magic that happens when you have a diverse perspective behind the lens, where an artist can shape a story that’s informed by his heritage. Ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards, where the film secured 13 nominations, praise for the movie has centered on how it draws inspiration from classic monster stories. Less has been said about how the film speaks to the Latin American experience.
In 2016, Latinos were given just 3 percent of speaking roles in movies, according to a report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. They didn’t even measure the number of Latino directors. When it’s so rare to spot Latinos on screen (and even more rare for them to be in a position of power), it’s important not to whitewash del Toro’s art.
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In “The Shape of Water,” the influence of del Toro’s Mexican heritage is evident in the mixture of the mundane with the fantastical. It’s a style that resembles aspects of “magical realism,” or as some academics prefer, “marvelous realism” — a literary technique that presents a real-world setting with enchanting elements, frequently attributed to Latin American authors.
“Marvelous realism is a narrative form that is largely set in a realistic environment and that environment is infused with a sense of wonder and enhancement,” said Jerónimo Arellano, an associate professor of Latin American literature and culture at Brandeis University.
Arellano explains that the literary technique came out the surrealism movement in post-World War I Europe. The most well-known purveyor of the technique is Nobel-prize winning Gabriel García Márquez, who used magical realism to help amplify his political critiques. While Arellano would stopped short of calling del Toro a magical realist, del Toro’s films are undoubtedly ripe with symbolism and surreal moments.
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Del Toro is known for being one of the most detail-oriented directors out there, infusing each element with meaning, said Keith McDonald, co-author of “Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art” and a subject director of film studies at York St John University.
Share this articleShare“I rarely see [a director] who has an almost compulsive attention to detail for every frame,” McDonald said. “You can see a frame and each one means something.”
And what each detail means is open to interpretation: “The idea is that you take away from it what you want.”
“The Shape of Water” is no different. It tells the story of Elisa Esposito, who, while working as a janitor at a top-secret U.S. government facility in the 1950s, befriends a fantastical fish-man creature who once was “worshiped as a god” in the Amazon before being captured by the American government.
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The ripping of the creature from the Amazon echoes the harsh realities of colonialism. When Europeans arrived in Latin America, they robbed, dissected and repackaged the region’s resources for profit. Similarly, the fish-man is exploited by the American government, which removes the creature from his natural habitat so their scientists can study his unique breathing mechanics.
In the film, an American colonel named Richard Strickland calls the fish-man an “affront” to humanity: “You may think that thing looks human — stands on two legs — but we’re created in the Lord’s image. And you don’t think that’s what the Lord looks like, do you?”
Elisa, though she’s human, bonds with the fish-man over their shared status as “others.” Elisa is mute, and like a Spanish-speaking person navigating an English-speaking world, she can’t communicate with those around her. It is because of her outsider experience she finds empathy for the fish-man.
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All of the “others” in the film bond similarly. It’s notable that Elsa’s companions are Zelda, an African American woman, and Giles, a gay man.
This affinity for the others is a common thread throughout del Toro’s films, said McDonald.
“The idea is that he gives people without a voice a voice,” McDonald said.
In the tradition of Latin American authors, del Toro used magical realism to send a coded and subversive criticism of colonialism to the audience. This Oscar season, we have a uniquely Latin American story, disguised as a monster movie, leading the pack in award nominations. With the commercial and critical success of “Black Panther” and “Coco,” it seems the tide is finally changing in favor of “the others.”
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