Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón are more than just respected peers, but two true friends who came up in the film industry at around the same time. While Del Toro was reasserting himself as a vibrant auteur with The Devil’s Backbone, Cuarón burst onto the scene fully formed with Y Tu Mamá También. They have always publicly supported each other, which is why it’s so meaningful that Cuarón would share that one of Del Toro’s masterpieces, the Best Picture-winning The Shape of Water, is a film so beautiful that it breaks him every single time that he watches it, and it’s easy to understand why.

Del Toro’s Fellow Filmmakers Adored ‘The Shape of Water’
Image Via Searchlight Pictures

In a Variety article celebrating The Shape of Water’s Oscar success, Cuarón’s jubilation about his friend’s success is succinctly quoted. He describes how “it’s a surprisingly emotional experience that connects directly with our longing,” and that it represents Guillermo’s heart. Cuarón claims that he rarely ever cries, yet, “when I saw The Shape of Water, I found myself crying, and I still do every time I see it.”

To echo those sentiments, fellow friend of Del Toro and Cuarón, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, called it Del Toro’s best film and described it as “brilliant, beautiful, and delicious.” Del Toro’s films tend to stray into the grotesque and the macabre, even as they’re regularly drenched in luscious colors, and usually aren’t given this kind of praise without some kind of obligatory caveat about the depravity lurking underneath. That’s probably because The Shape of Water commits fully to gently ripping its own heart out and asking you to marvel at it, with Del Toro presenting his most overtly romantic film to date.

Del Toro Presents a World of Ignored Beauty in ‘The Shape of Water’

In Guillermo’s rendition of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, sanitation worker Elisa (Sally Hawkins) falls madly for a mysterious Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) being held captive in a government conspiracy led by conformist stooge Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). With the help of her next-door neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins), and her coworker, Zelda (Octavia Spencer), Elisa must break the fishman out of his prison and to safety, pursuing the kind of love that she has always yearned for and doing whatever it takes to cherish it.

As can be expected from any Del Toro film, the visual design is impeccable, and it’s fitting that one of the film’s four Oscars was for its production design, which nails the 1960s period detail along with the sets that find the magical in the mundane. Be it the haphazardly polished containment room that the Amphibian Man is kept in or the Edward Hopper-inspired key lime green diner awash in streetlight, the world here is one that is bursting with beauty, if only anyone besides Elisa bothered to notice it.

Del Toro’s ‘Shape of Water’ Presents a Radical Love Story

That beauty is most effectively communicated through the film’s use of color theory, casually dropping the skeleton key to unlocking its vast emotional power by stating that “green is the color of the future.” That line hints at how many different shades of green are in the film’s lighting and set dressing, serving as a visual representation of its message being one of radical love in its many forms. Elisa is a sexually comfortable and thirstily open-minded appreciator of those who truly see her as she is, while the Amphibian Man is tenderly pulled in by her kindness and the solace she provides against a cruel world. When the two finally have their moment of erotic climax, they’re completely bathed in the green glow of progress.

In contrast, Strickland is a square-minded fascist with a closeted kink for silencing those who oppose him, with no care or consideration for all the ways in which he’s falling behind the future. It’s that tension between the fairy tale softness and the hard sociopolitical realism, buttressed by Alexandre Desplat’s delicate score, that makes The Shape of Water an unexpectedly moving valentine for the concept of love as a form of resistance and liberation. That’s more than enough to completely break you down, and maybe your tears will dance together into one big glob as they fall down your face.

Your changes have been saved The Shape of Water At a top-secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.Release Date December 1, 2017 Runtime 123 Minutes

The Shape of Water can be rented on Prime Video in the U.S.

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