The Shape of Water / Three Billboards
It seems that most of my film reviews start with the words “I was looking forward to seeing this film …”, then somewhere soon after that there’s that infamous word: ‘But’.
A water butt. In dark teal.
And, sadly, this movie is no exception.
There is a ‘but’. A big ‘but’.
A water but, you might say.
To be honest it’s pissing me off, as I’m wondering if I’ll ever like another film ever again. Well, that’s not entirely true, as I did enjoy The Florida Project, and would highly recommend Lady Bird, both of which were Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated. And I have a list of films to watch about a mile long, (when I’m not glued to ‘Making a Murderer’), so some of those MUST be good, right?
But (there it is again), but anyway, on to the topic, and another Oscar-nominated and indeed Oscar-winning film, The Shape of Water.
I liked Pan’s Labyrinth, a lot. So much so I even went to an ‘Edible Cinema’ showing of it in Notting Hill, which was a visual, audio and oral pleasure (literally - check out the menu! ^^). But this film … to say I was disappointed is like saying I was waiting for Santa to bring me the Death Star, when ultimately all I got was Snaggletooth. And maybe an Ewok.
It is just such a flawed and frankly rather boring film. So much so that you think ‘How on earth did this win Best Picture?! Weren’t there better films that year?!’. And indeed there were. ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ for starters, and ‘Get Out’. And my absolute favourite, ‘Dunkirk’ (note sarcasm).
I frankly can’t be arsed to go into too much detail about The Shape of Water, because life is short, but here it is in a nutshell:
It’s a fantasy film, yes, and we can accept that a mysterious fish-god has been found somewhere in the Amazon, BUT (I like big butts and I cannot lie) everything inside that fantasy world still has to be plausible. And it isn’t.
This is some kind of Top Secret facility, yet the cleaners have particularly casual access to the area with the freaky monster. Furthermore, they’re free to come and go as they please, and frequently have time completely unattended to interact with said monster. THIS ALONE is reason enough to stop watching the film. Yes. Harsh, but true. Film’s over, Guillermo.
Aside from that, the film is slower than an octogenarian walking to the postbox.
From a writing point of view, it’s shockingly amateur; there are so many upsettingly convenient, weak or just plain laughable points, e.g. the CCTV feed; the ID cards; Merman eating a cat for dinner but being über chummy with one just minutes later; the convenient bloodied hand prints after Merman ran way, not to mention he’d been in that cinema for well over an hour without anyone going ‘What’s that fishy alien guy doing here?’; the underwater sex (have you ever tried to flood your entire bathroom? I have); and the massively-stupid-yet-convenient posting of ‘Rain/Docks’ on the calendar (like, if I were trying to sneak my mate into the house while mum was home I wouldn’t write ‘Pete/House’ on my wall calendar). It was weak, expositional, lazy … bad.
And then there’s the NARRATION. The mysterious narration that offers us two lines at the beginning, like a Tom Hanks Christmas flick … then nothing for the ENTIRE film, yet for some reason feels obliged to return at the end, like some maudlin coda to a Disney Movie-of-the-Week involving children freeing a trapped Killer Whale ...
“I’m going to free you, Willy. And free your willy.”
Oh wait.
That’s exactly what this is.
This film …. this Best Picture Oscar-winning movie is basically a badly executed school play. A fantastical melodrama with very nice sets that the drama-teacher-cum-handyman built to distract the parental audience from the amateur plot.
It was never worthy of that award. In fact, the more I think about it, the more angry I get that ‘Three Billboards…’ didn’t win. Now that’s not a perfect film, but it’s far better than ‘Free Willy 3 - An Amazon Tail’. The ending might have divided audiences, but damn it was so Un-Hollywood you gotta respect it. But maybe that’s why it didn’t win Best Picture.
Vengeance isn’t good.
You know, Return of the Jedi was going to be called Revenge of the Jedi until Lucas et al decided that vengeance wasn’t a Jedi concept.
Perhaps if it ended with the baddies in jail and justice legitimately served, then it would’ve won. Or perhaps just an ending that didn’t leave us hanging. That’s why ‘Shawshank’ tacked that Mexican beach scene on the end - because Americans like an uplifting ending that leaves nobody in any doubt.
For me, Shape of Water is up there with Argo in the Film That Somehow Won Best Picture Oscar But Nobody Knows Why category. Remember Argo? Exactly. It was essentially a quite nicely dramatised documentary of some events that happened in an airport. But Best Picture?!? Instead of Amour, or Lincoln, or even Django?!
Criminal. Actually crim-i-nal.
Shape of Flippers won the Production Design Oscar, and I don’t think anyone can deny it that, it looks alright. But that’s as much as it should’ve got.
If I hadn’t seen the news and someone told me that Fish Sticks had won Best Picture then I’d assume they were joking, or that they’d opened the wrong envelope. The more I think about it, the more slack-jawed I get.
But let’s move on. It’s all subjective, and The Oscars are notoriously bad at picking the rightful winner. Subjectively.
“Any colour you like, so long as it’s Teal.”
But you know what ISN’T subjective?
TEAL!
My favourite colour.
And this movie has it in abundance. Obviously being a water-based production, ‘sea green’ and ‘aquamarine’ were going to feature quite prominently. But does Michael Shannon’s character really have to buy a brand new Cadillac in teal?! It’s not like it’s subtle either - the salesman even promotes the car as being ‘teal, not green’. In a world that’s Fifty Shades of Teal.
I just felt like someone in Hollywood was doing it to annoy me.
I’m teal, dab a dee dab a doo…
The thing is, it’s got to the point where it’s psychosomatic. I think that’s the right expression. Or maybe Pavlovian. I went to a fancy restaurant called The Jugged Hare the other day, for birthday lunch. My Dad had the teal, which is a small duck (with pale green plumage, hence the name). Just the sight of this turquoise-tinged turkey made my blood simmer.
Maybe it’s getting to me too much.
I, on the other hand, had a red grouse.
Red is a good colour. A primary colour, the colour of love and danger, life and death.
Anyway,