Blue Jasmine

Depending on the Kindness (Enabling) of Strangers
or
Being Entitled to Your Opinion

Blue Moon/You saw me standing alone/
Without a dream in my heart/Without a love of my own/
Blue Moon/You know just what I was there for/
You heard me saying a prayer for/Someone I really could care for/
And then there suddenly appeared before me/
The only one my arms will hold/
I heard somebody whisper please adore me/
And when I looked to the Moon it turned to gold
Blue Moon/Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart/Without a love of my own

Woody Allen's 21st century version of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," Blue Jasmine, is a contemporary version of the play's tragedy in an unsympathetic post-Bernie Madoff/Wall Street Bail-Out world, turning it into a moralistic comedy. It may seem a little misogynistic to be so mocking to someone as Williams' Blanche DuBois who has suffered a cataclysm, but when the someone is as cluelessly entitled and myopic as Allen's Jasmine (nee Jeanette) Francis (Cate Blanchett), there is a very real glee to see them get their, as the term is used in The Magnificent Ambersons, "comeuppance."

It's a brilliant conceit, combining Allen's love for classic literature and forms, tossing his own hang-dog spin onto it, while, for once, being refreshingly contemporary—something Allen hasn't really done of late, as he's had a depressive's obsession with the past for the past couple of decades (no matter how fresh the cast may be).

Allen starts his film (after the standard black background with white credits backed this time by '30's depression era rhythm and blues) with an (unusual for him) CGI shot of a jet approaching the camera, sailing by and moving away. Jasmine Francis ("I fell in love with the 'Jasmine.' 'Jeanette' has no panache") is on that jet flying from New York to San Francisco to move in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins—her second film for Allen) for a fresh start after losing everything in her life. They're both adopted and couldn't be more different (As Sally says "She got the good genes."); Jeanette is all high cheek-bones and au couture, while Sally is low class and all teeth, surrounded by Guido's and roughnecks. Jasmine has suffered a reversal of fortune as her husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) has been caught wheeling and dealing in real estate schemes, ending up in prison, and committing suicide. Her extended visit delays Ginger's boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale) moving in with her and her two kids by Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), her ex-husband. There's a bit of a sandpaper quality to Ginger and Jasmine's relationship; when Ginger and Augie were married, they lost a lottery nest-egg investing in one of Hal's "get-rich-quick" investment schemes, something Jasmine forgets when she drama-queens over her own plight, and dismisses entirely when confronted with it.

Jasmine (Blanchett) and Ginger (Hawkins)

So it rankles when Jasmine pulls a Mrs. Madoff and claims victim-hood about the money she's lost. Jasmine has no plans, no prospects, and there are hints of a nervous breakdown after she was found wandering the streets talking to herself. Now, she's popping Xanax with a vodka chaser and barely keeping ahead of anxiety attacks and comatose fugue states as she barrels through the lower echelons of San Francisco, trying to latch onto opportunities.

She decides to go back to school, learning computers so she can go "into" interior design, taking a job at a dentist's (Michael Stuhlbarg)—for which she is totally ill-suited (anything with the words "customer" and "service" in any combination would be)—to fund the courses. In the meantime, from her lowly status, she lords it over the family and friends she finds beneath her. That meaning everyone.

The flip-side to this is that people still find her attractive, as she puts up a great, if shallow, front, speaking of her glory days—which segue into flashbacks of her privileged happy life, only to find that once the flashback has ended, that she's still carrying on the conversation inside the flashback, and whoever she was talking through previously has left.* It's a clever use of flashback as psychosis, a clever, nearly invisible off-shoot of the film-star (played by Jeff Daniels) stepping out of the film in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Where Allen has been living in the past the last few films, Jasmine is doing the same thing, to her detriment, as, whether in flashback or real life, it comes back to haunt her and take her away from the present and any future she might aspire to.

It's a return to near perfect form without the tricks and conceits that Allen used (during his "earlier, funny" films) and nicely merges the bi-polar extremes of comedy and tragedy that the more mature filmmaker in Allen has aspired to.  It also feels less fussy and musty than the after-taste some of the lesser Allen films have left of late. After a lifetime of making good films, some classic and some merely pedantic, and eschewing his earlier stylistic tricks, one wonders if, at the age of 78, Allen's best films might still be ahead of him and that's an exciting prospect.

Jasmine in her "fugue" state

* It's a bit like the Larry David monologues-to-the-camera in Whatever Works, only there's no child around to ask "Who's that man talking to, Mommy?"

Never Let Me Go

Alex Garland, who wrote and directed Civil War, adapted the Booker-winning tome the film is based on.

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Ménage à Triage"
or
"My Clone Sleeps Alone"

"The breakthrough in medical science came in 1952. Doctors could now cure the previously incurable. By 1967, life expectancy passed 100 years."

Never Let Me Go, the film, makes you wonder what all the fuss was about. A slight "Twilight Zone" bit of story, hinging on one theme—the central conceit being the showing of life from the point of view of sheltered, cloned organ donors who will live out their short lives being harvested for spare parts—but taking the concept and going nowhere with it, serving almost solely for the metaphorical revelation that "life is short."

 

I know that. I read the papers.

The book the film is based on, written by Kazuo Ishiguro (who wrote "The Remains of the Day"), was nominated for the Booker Prize for fiction in 2005. It is faint praise to say the film makes you want to read the book, as it must be Ishiguro's writing style that garnered the acclaim, and the majesties and mysteries of his prose and story-telling capabilities that inspired the making of this film that betrays those intentions. Because other than that central conceit, and some interesting acting choices by the participants, the film fails to generate anything other than a melancholy malaise. And whether one wants to use it as a tract against Britain's private school system, a cautionary tale of "science gone wrong," the ultimate pointlessness of Faith, or the horrific extensions of animal experimentation, the fact is that we're all one synaptic event away from becoming a squishy spare parts warehouse, as revealed on our own personal Id's, something done as an act of charity, the giving of our last full measure.

So, the mixed signals sent by the film of the book, and its clumsy way of revealing the particulars of the plot, do no service to its source, merely revealing the surface highlights, and not delving into more meaty psychological or motivational matters, turning the film into merely a digest, a palimpsest, or more appropriately, a cadaver of the book.

It focuses on a trio of children—Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield)—raised in a private boarding school, one of many that is, in fact, more of a farm. The children attending know nothing of the outside world, raised in a bubble of perfect manners, good health, docility, and fear of what lies beyond the fence surrounding the grounds. There is no need to prepare them for life as we know it, because they won't be participating in it. Only contributing to it.

They are carefully groomed and kept in the dark about their purpose, and within the cliques that inevitably occur there, rumors and speculation swirl among the kids about what happens when you go outside the fence (nothing good), and eventually, about ways to get deferments from donor status by proving their worth by displaying artistic skill...or, cruelly, falling in love.

They cling to these beliefs, like rosaries, with no basis in fact, but only the strength of their hopes, and in the absence of all evidence. Kathy and Tommy grow close, become empathetic friends, but as they grow older, Ruth becomes the object of Tommy's affections, and Kathy goes her own path, choosing to become a "carer," in service of the donors on the short path of their careers, delaying her fate, watching as those less fortunate are taken away from her, piece by piece. 

It's frustrating watching. Oh, the actors are fine, and actually more than fine, given the material. Mulligan's crooked half-smile speaks volumes of a life only partially lived, and Knightley is completely unafraid of looking sadly decrepit.  But, it is still painful to watch these clueless kids, marginalized and compartmentalized, pursuing fruitless hopes in an effort to live a full life. One would feel more sympathy if they would just be a bit more their own advocates, or even a bit more revolutionary. It is extraordinarily facile to compare this one to other "low shelf-life" movies on the order of The Island, or Logan's Run, sci-fi action films on the theme. Never Let Me Go has the same built-in planned obsolescence of adolescents conundrum—given the acquisition of some knowledge, wouldn't some of them choose to fight it? It doesn't have to be with space-guns and chase scenes, but...something. And despite their role in the food-chain, don't the administrators of these schools (Charlotte Rampling plays the main one here), especially the ones portrayed here, have some sort of empathetic identification with their charges, especially given the revelations they profess (rather hollowly)? That these questions pop up during the viewing of the film, when one should be riveted to the screen and it's reflected situations, only points out that the film-makers haven't done their work perfecting their illusions, in pursuit of their allusions. 

To further extrapolate the somewhat cruel comparison of the film to a cadaver of the original piece, the spirit of the thing is missing, however ardently it is played. Ultimately, one's appreciation of the film lies in its performances in the service of a flawed interpretation and one's own interest in the players, which is as superficial as this film feels.

Wonka

Come With Me/And You'll Be/in a World of Re-Imagination

or

Chocolopalypse Now
 

Did they need to make another "Willy Wonka" movie? Not really. The original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was such a fine confection, a combination of elements so slick and shabby that it far exceeded the sum of its parts. It hit the brain like dopamine, the same reaction as when chocolate melts on your tongue.

 

And like chocolate, it was a surprise that it was as good as it was, given its meager budget and its less-than-pure beginnings (Originally, envisioned as a marketing tool for a new line of candy, it pretty much had to stand on its own when Quaker Oats, the company making the stuff, had production problems and scrapped the "Wonka" candy line). The book's author, Roald Dahl, is credited with the screenplay, but he didn't really write it—his script was shelved—and David Seltzer wrote the egg-creamy Gene Wilder version. He and director Mel Stuart turned it into a perennial, one of "those" movies—the ones like The Wizard of Oz or The Black Stallion—that you have to show your kids knowing that those movie-memories will be golden, enriching and last a lifetime. Quaker Oats' loss was our gain.

So, there didn't need to be another Willy Wonka movie. In fact, the only reason to make another Willy Wonka movie...is that Wonka is so darned good.

 

A prequel of sorts to the 1970 film, it follows young Wonka (played by a winsome Timothée Chalamet), new immigrant from wherever, sailing into England (I think, hard to say), full of hopes and dreams, visions of chocolate trifles dancing in his entrepreneurial head. He has a vision, this guy, inspired by his mother (Sally Hawkins, always welcome) of making the sweetest chocolate this side of Loompaland (from which he has absconded their out-sized cacao beans) and with the magical thinking that if he can just establish his choco-shop, it will fulfill his late mother's promise that she would be at his side at the opening to divulge her secret of chocolate-making.

Illiterate, and in shabby clothes with only 20 shillings in his threadbare pocket, he ends up sleeping on a bench, when he is offered accommodations at the rooms of Scrubbit (Olivia Colman) and Bleacher (Tom Davis), where the rent is only 1 shilling to be paid by end of next day. Wonka is sure he can sell enough chocolates to pay oodles more, but before he can sign the contract, he is warned by the waif Noodle (Calah Lane) to "read the fine print" But, he can't read, so he signs—not that he would have read the slogan on the wall "Come For a Night, Stay For a Lifetime" if he could.

After a night of making confections, he goes out into the street and with just his brio (and a song), he sells his wares, only to confronted by "The Chocolate Cartel" of Slugworth (Paterson Joseph—he's great!), Prodnose (Matt Lucas), and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) that his chocolates are "...weird." And is told by the Chief of the Police (Keegan-Michael Key) that he cannot sell his chocolates without a shop and without a shop he cannot sell chocolates, so he must cease and desist.

And if that weren't enough of a bad day, he is informed by Scrubbit and Bleacher that he has incurred a debt of 10,000 shillings from his stay and the fine print, and must work it off in their considerable laundry service, alongside past tenants Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter), Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell), Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher), Lottie Bell (Rakhee Thakrar), and Noodle. Only two days in the city and Wonka is Catch-22'd into no work, no income and no hope (not to mention that when he's able to make chocolate, it is being stolen by someone nefarious that he hasn't been able to catch yet).

What's a Wonka to do?

Well, it's a musical-comedy based on a children's book, so, obviously he has a lot to do. Nobody working on Wonka is doing something world-shaking or revolutionary.

 

Other than making a darned good movie.

Oh, sure it takes about 20 minutes and a so-so song before it finds it's legs, but right about the time Wonka mentions that one of his chocolates is "salted with the bittersweet tears of a Russian clown" I was fully on-board and the film did not disappoint. In fact, it made this jaded old film-writer laugh out loud several times.

Credit must go to director/co-writer Paul King, who may be something of a magician himself. With the two Paddington Bear movies under his belt, he seems to have developed the recipe for making a charming entertainment that appeals to both kids and adults with equal rapture. There was a funny through-line in last year's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, where Nic Cage, in attempting to bond with his millionaire benefactor asks him what his third favorite movie is and the response to his shock is Paddington 2. The Cage character is aghast, but after watching it, is moved to tears and cannot help but agree. I haven't seen the Paddingtons. On the strength of Wonka, they are now on my ever-expanding list of "must-sees."

The cast is uniformly superb. Doubts about Chalamet being a suitable Willy Wonka should be put to rest given the evidence (the reason Chalamet is so ubiquitous in movies these days is that the man's extraordinarily talented). If he's not quite Gene Wilder's sly loony Wonka, consider that this is a prequel when the character is just getting started and hasn't yet come to the point where the pressure of industrial food manufacturing will throw his gears off-slot. If such a movie is made, King might not be the best fit for it, maybe someone a bit more perverse would be in order.

But, for now, for this movie, King has done a masterful job, even finding lovely roles for such British institutions as Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Grant, who is cast as a perpetually vexing Oompa Loompa, named "Lofty," and does it with such an air of haughty superiority (and no Grant dithering) that he very nearly walks away with the picture. No small feat.

So, if one is putting off going to this one because of rumors on the cranky internet, turn it off and go. Go immediately. And take a child. Get permission, of course.
 

Where most movies skewing towards a younger audience are as disappointing as biting a hollow chocolate Easter bunny, this one is pleasingly solid.

 

Enjoy.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)

Doing the Limbo Dance with Godzilla (Faith and Ghidorah)
or
Dr. Serizawa's Magic Bullet

I was anticipating the new Godzilla movie, Godzilla: King of Monsters, when I saw the trailer start to hit theaters. I enjoyed Gareth Edwards' 2014 take on the series, and was suitably impressed with what Legendary Entertainment was doing with their second "Monsterverse" film, Kong: Skull Island. But, to see the trailer for G:KOM, with appearances by other Toho Studio monsters, like Rodan, Ghidorah, and Mothra (especially Mothra) gave me a sense of giddy joy, as in "My God, they're really going to try and do these cheesy monsters with a sense of "real" CGI verisimilitude, instead of the puppeteered, rubber-suited versions we're used to?" And then, to bring a respectable cast of characters actors like David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe, and Sally Hawkins (all returning from the 2014 film), as well as Bradley Whitford, Kyle Chandler, Charles Dance, Vera Farmiga (!) and Ziyi Zhang (!!!), I was somewhat delirious, as in "Oh My God-zilla, are they actually going to make a decent movie out of this juvenile material? That would be so awesome!"

The answer is "No, they didn't." One wonders if they ever could, but the hope was there, and although the film is semi-successful in some aspects, the conclusion from what I saw was a disappointing result from an over-the-top concept.

But, to get any enjoyment from the experience, a little perspective is required. To illustrate, here is a scene featuring a "pitched" battle between those same four antagonists from the 1964 feature Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster*

There, now you should be prepared to see Godzilla: King of Monsters and come out somewhat impressed. Extreme, I know. But, you have to set the bar pretty low to raise expectations.

It's been four years since the appearance of Godzilla—"the day the world discovered that monsters are real"—the film starts with a flashback to the events in San Francisco where two new characters, Mark and Dr. Emma Russell (Chandler and Farmiga), two Monarch** specialists are caught in the fray...with their family for some reason...resulting in the death of one of their kids, their son, Andrew (definitely a downside to "Take Your Child to Work Day" when working for Monarch). This fractures the family (you think?). Mark, embittered and wanting to kill the Titans, and GZ in particular, goes off to study wolves, while Dr. Emma continues her husband's work of creating a communication system, designed to keep whales from beaching themselves. Only she's using it to see if she can communicate with the MUTO's. It's a good way to set up all sorts of "Geez, I hope this works..." scenes.

Their daughter Madison (played by Millie Bobby Brown from "Stranger Things") is keeping up contact with Dad and worrying about Mom's frequent moodiness and is one of those irritating "Wesley Crusher" kids, who can take some wires, a USB cable, and a Brillo-pad and hack into a pay-telephone so it can communicate with the Mars rover Endeavor to save Matt Damon (although she has trouble making breakfast...fake-out!). It's no wonder Dr. Emma takes her to the Monarch project where they're trying to awaken Mothra (Hey, remember "Take Your Child to Work Day?" Worked out real well last time, didn't it?). But, not to worry. Even though Mothra freaks out and kills some techs, Dr. Emma is able to take her "Orca" device, push a button, and translate Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" into Mothra-song to calm it down. This inspires Madison to confuse the multi-million dollar facility with a petting zoo to reach out and touch the creature bare-handed without a care about communicable disease or some sort of tactile osmosis that would put a Mothra-larvae into her body that will burst out at a later time (possible sequel?).

Dr. Emma worries about how she's going to explain this to CPS

They don't have to think about that, anyway, as, once they have Mothra under control, former MI6 agent and prominent eco-terrorist Alan Jonah (Dance) bursts in with some merc's, seize the Orca device, and take Dr. Emma and Madison hostage for his nefarious plans to do something evil and inspire a rescue operation. Mission accomplished on that last one; Monarch, in the form of Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Watanabe) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (Hawkins) finds Mark dancing with wolves and tells him what's happened. They set out to track Jonah and his whale-sized ambitions to try and get little Maddy back.

Monarch gets lectured by Dr. Emma (while her ex glowers about "hearing this before"

That, as it is, is the plot. The rest involves globe-trotting to many Monarch outposts, tracking the movements of GZ, and the intentional setting free of the three-headed monster Ghidorah, who has been trapped in Antarctic ice for eons. Once he's—or they, I've have pronoun troubles with three-headed things—thawed, it goes about the world freeing other Titans in its official title as apex predator, which is what Jonah has intended all along. His justification being that the Titans have been here longer, and that we relatively newbie humans are screwing up the planet, so the Titans will fix it all up by getting rid of us. This, then, makes Jonah the ultimate anti-immigration activist (hurts when it's you, doesn't it?). 

Foreshadowing that Godzilla and Mark might some day see eye to eye.

There's more match-up fights than an episode of the WWF—Mothra versus Rodan, Godzilla versus Rodan, Godzilla versus Ghidorah (SPOILER ALERT-he gets his scaly tail handed to him, regroups then comes back and wins, with a little help from his monster friends, and ultimately wins the gold belt-buckle that says "King of the Monsters") and the puny little humans help as best they can, but, basically, they're farm-league, only good at running away and, failing that, becoming kaiju toe-jam .

Ghidorah bug-zaps Mothra

That's what we all go to see—monsters fighting, even if it's in murky darkness, so they don't have to have the CGI be perfect (or it was the low-projection level of the 3-D version, which is the format I saw it in), and despite the creators' earnest intentions, it's the same format that the other films have usually had. Some pretext in the human world sets everything up—in this case, it's the problems with the Russell's, whom we've never heard of before and have the most basic issues on which to hang a monsters-fighting scenario on. At least, it's not manipulation by space-aliens, or venusians, or some other clap-trap that would cause your eyes to roll sop far back in your head that you'd miss the fights at the end.

Rodan goes in for the kill

You have to suspend belief so high that it's achieved orbit, while at the same time lowering expectations so low that your back will be killing you the next day. Either that, or you have to be such a True Believer Fan, that you just don't care, because you get a thrill every time you hear Godzilla amp up like an old diesel generator before he unleashes a force-beam of some completely unfathomable energy that will somehow shred whatever big-thingy he's up against. When you're that deep in the fantasy, there are no rules of engagement, you're just glad for the engagement—like your desperate Aunt Sophie.

Ghidorah provides free WI-FI to everybody.

The human actors do a fine job of spouting techno-babble and mumbo-jumbo as if it makes sense—Whitford seems to be having a good relaxed time (he's had to negotiate Aaron Sorkin dialogue) and Strathairn looks like he's really having to double-down on the glower to prevent himself from cracking up over what he's saying (there are quite a few Oscar and Emmy nominees in this cast, by the way...although this probably won't inspire "For Your Consideration" ads come the next awards season). And they're very good at the Spielberg-trope of looking up with a faraway look as if their lives depended on it.

"For Your Consideration"

There are, despite some of the hammer-hitting lack of subtlety in the film, some nice touches: the constant calling-upon of hieroglyphic evidence of kaiju presence during man's early development (however unlikely that may seem); the sense of glowing myth as the creatures never seem to be present in anything other than strange weather phenomenon, as if they were tied to the very natural forces that soak, electrify, and shake the planet—like some manifestation of Kurosawa's emotional weather conditions; there's even a moment that might be confusing for most audience members—Ziyi Zhang plays two characters in the film, twin sisters, who hearken back to similar twins, the twin fairies, the diminutive shobijin, who summon forth Mothra with their song. It's a tiny little detail, but it set my "mothra-sense" to tingling when I saw the actress appear in a continuity-defying two places at once.

"Please notice that the 'Fasten Your Seat-Belt' sign is on..."

But Godzilla, King of the Monsters is not that great a movie. A pretty darned good giant monster movie and a bit of an improvement over its source material (remember: no venusians...). If it has any luck, it'll become a Saturday afternoon staple on television—which is where I saw most of these things in my youth (and I was cynical about them then). It pays homage to its source by not being too reverential about it or trying to make it more "significant" than it is (despite my comic intentions to politicize it). It was, and still is, a cheese-fest. It's just that the price of cheese has gone up—significantly—over the years.

"Let's get ready to rummmmmblllllle..."

Oh. And one passing thought: despite the dangers displayed by galumphing behemoths of various genera and type, spitting sparks of a source not found in Nature's spectrum, one gets the impression that they are not considered the biggest concern or threat to the filmmakers. Given the evidence of the film and what they choose to show and how they show it, the real danger is...bad mothers.

Hope that doesn't spoil anything.

"King me, baby!"

Prepare for the inevitable cage-match (2020, they're saying)

* Or as it's known in the States, Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster (with only two syllables).

** Monarch is the secretive Japanese-American organization that studies M.U.T.O.'s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms—or the more PC, "Titans") that have emerged from the Earth's hollow interior due to man's atomic experiments and other destructive activities—like building Monarch's massive underground outposts. Monarch seems to have an unlimited budget and unlimited resources, and 61 outposts around the globe to hunt 17 of these things. It's no wonder there is a Senate investigation of the thing in this movie. Next thing you know, Trump will want one of these organizations if he can't get his Space-Rangers.

Oh. One more thing-they always have to fight by power-lines. Always.

The Shape of Water

Animal Magnetism
or
"Monsters are the Patron Saints of Imperfection"

Guillermo del Toro

The cinema of Guillermo del Toro veers to and fro in the land of fantasy, never too far from the things that haunt, scare, and thrill us. But, as opposed to a director like Tim Burton, monsters are not a fun thing.

Del Toro treats them very seriously, be they friend or foe. And his monsters become us, even if his characters don't become monsters.

Monsters are a passion of his, but not a hobby. And when he considers a monster—particularly those featured in the films of his youth—there is always the embedded thought: "What are THEY feeling?" Most monster movies consider the feelings of the folks in the film who are like us, the better that we might understand their reactions when they encounter something strange and not like us. There is kinship there. Entertainment value.

And tribalism. But, rather than consider the "us against them" mentality that most monster movies (like his own Pacific Rim) encourage, del Toro will think about what the monster is feeling. He was thinking about his own reactions to The Creature from the Black Lagoon when he went to Universal Studios more than ten years ago to propose creating a remake with more sympathy for the "Creature." Universal, who was planning its own ways of screwing up their classic monsters, turned him down cold.

One hopes their their lawyers aren't monsters, and see his new film, The Shape of Water, for what it is—an extraordinarily well-done gene-splicing of Creature and "Beauty and the Beast"—rather than as a fishing expedition for a copyright infringement suit. Frankly, they don't have a case. The Shape of Water is its own magical animal, far removed from, and more highly evolved than, its source.

It starts, appropriately, in a dream-like state underwater with a narrator still trying to absorb his tale of "the princess without a voice, a love lost, and the monster who tried to destroy it all." The narrator is Giles (Richard Jenkins), who is a commercial artist who lives in a garret above a movie theater.* "The princess without a voice" is his across-the-hall neighbor Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), mute since birth, who works as a cleaning woman for an organization that looks suspiciously like Hellboy's BPRD** but is the Occam Aerospace Research Center. She has a quick daily routine at home and usually shows up to work barely on time after a cross-town bus-ride, where she is saved a place to clock-in by her friend Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) where they clean the facility at night.

One night, an elaborate container housing "what may well be the most sensitive asset ever housed in this facility" is brought into OARC, along with its caretaker Col. Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), who captured the "asset" in a South American river. The "asset" is an amphibian creature, once worshiped as a god by the Amazonian natives, but Strickland is less enamored of it. OARC is interested in it for space research, but Strickland's military masters see no point in keeping it around to study it. They, like Strickland, are more intrigued in vivisection, seeing what makes (or made) the thing tick,,,once it stops ticking. Strickland doesn't see it so much as an asset as an affront.

But, two people have an interest in keeping it alive: Elisa sees it as an exotic beautiful thing, and she visits it regularly, feeding it hard-boiled eggs and playing it music; new OARC scientist Bob Hofstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg...the ubiquitous Michael Stuhlbarg) sees it as a waste of a scientific anomaly. But, he has another reason...Bob's real name is Dimitri, and he's a Soviet agent who has infiltrated OARC to find out what he can about the research going on there. Bob/Dimitri's Soviet contacts are intrigued by the creature and have no idea why the Americans would want it...but, if THEY want it, the Russians want it, too. 

On the flip-side, if the Russian CAN't have it, they want Dimitri to kill it. But, he IS conflicted as a scientist. And when Elisa discovers that the military has plans to destroy it, she makes a decision—not on her shift, and she begins an elaborate...and dangerous...plan to creature-nap the asset. But, Giles is hesitant; he has his own issues and is reluctant to do anything that might draw more attention to himself.

It's a fairy tale, but like most of del Toro's work it is not a complacent one. Here it is the task of the princess to save, rather than be saved. And the monster? Well, it's basically "corporate man." If The Shape of Water has a weakness it's that it's a little heavy-handed on the heavy, which is Strickland. Shannon is up to the task of playing it, of course, but Strickland is such a compendium of every perverted instinct he could probably have been portrayed as a studio head. He's insensitive to beyond the point of cruelty, he's prejudiced, elitist, a potential rapist, uses the Bible—or his interpretation of it—as his justification for his view of the creature ("W're created in the Lord's image. You don't think that's what the Lord looks like, do you?") and he has the audacity to be reading "The Power of Positive Thinking." If you want a comparison, look to the Nazi father of Pan's Labyrinth, but, there the ending is cathartic—you want him to suffer and he does. Strickland, not so much, not to my satisfaction, anyway. If you're going to consider how much the monster feels, there's no much feeling there. Someone so insufferable should suffer more, I think.

But, that's my big fish to fry with the film. Del Toro has made something gorgeous, taking some inspiration from Michael Powell for his vision of things. and filling it with the strong visuals needed to communicate the feelings of someone mute. He's aided, immeasurably, by Sally Hawkins here, who does the sort of effervescent acting that one rarely finds outside of silent pictures, one that incorporates body language, rhythm, even dance. Compared to what everybody else is doing, weakened by actually having to express themselves, Hawkins is a shining light throughout the film that draws you in.

And as his creature, del Toro has again tapped Doug Jones, maybe the least recognizable actor in films...even less than Andy Serkis. Jones played all of the creatures—distinctively—in Pan's Labyrinth, as well as Abe Sapien in both Hellboy movies, and his body-acting instincts as the creature, as much as we see of him, are stately and elegant (even during a black and white dance sequence) despite being done in full prosthetics—not even motion capture. One hopes, for his sake, that they kept the water warm.

It is not a movie for little kids (I shouldn't have to say it, but I'm thinking of those parents who dragged their children to Downsizing), ironic given that a viewing of The Creature from the Black Lagoon at 13 inspired it. But, if one is given to romantic fantasy with a harder edge, it's a great movie to see.

When I think of her all that comes to mind is a poem, made of just a few truthful words, whispered by someone in love, hundreds of years ago: 'Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love. It humbles my heart, for you are everywhere.

* Judging by the movie starting its run at the theater—The Story of Ruth—and that John Glenn is seen on television, the year must be 1960.

** The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.