The Shape of Water is a bit like the film equivalent of Jenkins’s Giles, who, struggling to find his place in society, says that he was born either too early or too late for his life. It didn’t become a political flashpoint like Three Billboards Over Ebbing, Missouri, which is shaping up to be this year’s Best Picture favorite despite the backlash against its treatment of race and violence. It didn’t ostensibly create an entirely new cinematic genre like Get Out. In contrast with the rest of the 2018 nominees, The Shape of Water-an epic-feeling period piece with a healthy splash of “Hooray for Hollywood”–style navel-gazing-is a little bit out of time. Great movies don’t have to spark memes, but frankly, it’s one way that they seep into the national conversation and become part of our daily lives, if even only for a season. And, let’s be real, there’s not much time left in the day to extoll Hawkins’s greatness, because Instagram-stalking Timothée Chalamet is practically a full-time job. There are no exquisite resting bitch faces, à la Cyril from Phantom Thread. And that may be because-fish phallus microtrend aside - The Shape of Water is just not that Internet-y-or, at least, not as Internet-y as its Oscar competition. So why isn’t anybody really talking about it? Not just at the Oscars luncheon, but at brunch and dinner and, of course, on Twitter? In spite of its high notes, The Shape of Water has seemed to fail to break through and reach the wider pop culture conversation like the best Oscar movies tend to do. But in the end, the glorious, all-consuming weirdness of The Shape of Water prevails. There are plenty of shortcomings, including Michael Shannon- yet again-playing a one-dimensional Lucifer (seriously, someone cast him in a frothy rom-com and let him stretch a little!) and saddling the ever-wonderful Octavia Spencer with what felt like an archetypal sassy black sidekick role. Maybe there’s something lovely about falling in love with a man/fish/Amazonian deity because you’re both outsiders! And maybe it’s just dandy to forsake all convention and sleep with him in your bathtub too.
And, most of all, that the story-and its transportive, under-the-sea production value-bends your mind and forces you to temporarily subscribe to twisty fairy tales, tells you to get over yourself and your basic, La La Land notions of romance, coaxes you to suspend belief and play along.
And that Richard Jenkins, Elisa’s gay friend Giles, is heart-tugging and rueful and tender in that perfect Richard Jenkins-y way. It was on that very day that I learned that Hawkins, as the mute cleaning lady Elisa Esposito, conveys an entire love story with her facial expressions, saying it all without saying a word.
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