After Watching The Shape of Water

the tale of love and loss

It's not that I like the Academy Awards, but the Academy Awards seems to catch my eye because it's the film festival best timed to wrap up 'February,' the socially agreed-upon end of the year. American film festivals fall broadly into two categories. One is the 'Oscars,' led by commercial films; the other is the 'Sundance Film Festival,' led by independent films. Both surely have directors who draw attention. Among them this time, Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, which won the Oscar, caught my eye a bit more. Before getting into the film in earnest, it's simply refreshing that, besides this work, the other films that interested me this year - Florida Project, Darkest Hour, The Post, Call Me by Your Name, I, Tonya - are all considered fine works, in other words works with 'artistic merit.' The very fact that such a variety of works can be discussed for their artistic merit is itself a joy.

Getting back to the point, The Shape of Water is a film about society's minorities. Its setting can be summed up as Cold War-era America. Today the word 'minority' has become a language that represents diverse groups. The minorities I have met include people with disabilities (referred to as having a disorder, encompassing those who cannot speak or hear, as well as those who have had cerebral palsy, those with autism, those with Williams syndrome, and various other people), sexual minorities (people whose sexual orientation is toward the same sex, or people who like both), Black people (minorities considered in light of the mood of the era in American society at the time. Of course, even now there are people in white society who regard whites as the highest class. To those people, Black and Asian people are still minorities), and so on. In depicting these people, the film shows them through extremely intuitive scenes. Discrimination against Black people appears through Strickland's remark that God would look like him, and through the managers of the franchise pie shop who drive out a Black couple, saying there is no seat for them when they enter the restaurant. That franchise manager, upon confirming that Giles (the painter) is gay, also tells him never to come again. The film presents these points of discrimination in various ways. And the one who resists that discrimination is Elisa, who cannot speak.

Elisa craves someone to love, masturbates every day when she showers and goes to work, yet the clothes she wears are always drab in color. That the one who communes with such an Elisa is a fish-man who cannot speak and is confined in a T-4 tank felt a little frightening to me at first. I was startled, too, when the fish-man was confined inside the structure and struck the glass surrounding it. The biggest reason I was startled, though, was that a woman sitting next to me kept getting startled first and loudly.. In any case, it was full of scenes that startle people here and there. Unlike 'my startlement as an observer,' Elisa, with the minimal startlement of a protagonist, forms a relationship with that 'fish-man.' Boiling more eggs to bring to the fish-man, the fish-man learning sign language, listening to music and dancing and forming a communion - these were scenes of communion commonly seen all around us. In this part, they and we were not different at all. I don't intend to draw a distinction of 'us' and 'them.' I just felt, for a moment, that I had to compare myself with her.

Scenes that stand out impressively in the film - for example, that when Strickland's family first appears the mood of the house is a 'bright, warm home,' while when his life goes awry and his flesh is gradually rotting it appears against the backdrop of a 'dark home' - and the contrasting changes in Elisa's costume (from black to red shoes and a red headband, and later even a red dress) are striking. And the change in 'Zelda,' who could be called the most three-dimensional character, was quite impressive. Zelda's transformation from an ordinary citizen is, in some indefinable way, a part that points to the possibility of change in the most ordinary people. Because many people would have felt that they themselves are like 'Zelda.'

A few days ago, while eating lunch at Burger King, I saw an elderly mother who had a son with a disability. The son was rocking his body back and forth as an expression of joy. Probably if I put it this way most people won't understand, but I understood. His joy. His rocking back and forth. Just like the way Patrick used to rock long ago. It's a night I miss Patrick. Because I will remember the 'Thank you' sign that Elisa showed. I think I'll remember it forever from now on. It's a moment when I recall the times I spent in England. Because the fact that modern society is, little by little, taking on the posture to accept this diversity and cultivate it well is, I think, perhaps the most necessary part for supporting the idea that this is the most beautiful period in human history.