Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro: “I like to make movies that are liberating. Like The Shape of Water”
Poetry, monsters, love, Gill-man and other amazing tales: the Oscar winner director explains his world
by Rebecca Wang
5th March 2018
https://hotcorn.com/en/movies/news/guillermo-del-toro-i-like-to-make-movies-that-are-liberating-like-the-shape-of-water/
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Good and evil, innocence and menace, the historical and the eternal, beauty and monstrosity weave in and out of each other, revealing that no darkness can ever fully defeat the light. Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water is definitely “a romantic fairy tale for grownups,” an other-worldly fable, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962, with the evolution of Gill-man, the lead antagonist of the 1954 black-and-white science fiction film Creature from the Black Lagoon. “But I don’t think the Gill-man is designed in a way that he can be a romantic lead,” said the director, “It’s beautiful, but it’s not a romantic lead.” In The Shape of Water we have Elisa (Sally Hawkins), trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a classified experiment.
Guillermo del Toro, Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones on the set of The Shape of Water.
THE BEGINNING “I sent a message to Sally (Hawkins) in 2013 that I was writing this role for her, and when we met, she told me she had already been in the middle of writing a short story about a woman who becomes a fish. She sent me her story and it was full of insights. Sally is the most genuine, unaffected person and I don’t think she is capable of doing anything that isn’t emotionally real.”
THE YEAR “What interested me is that 1962 is a time when everybody was focused on the future, while my creature is an ancient form of the deep past. People are obsessed with what’s new, with AD jingles, the moon, modern clothes, television. And in the meantime here’s this ancient force, a creature in love, who comes among them.”
Del Toro with Octavia Spencer and Sally Hawkins on the set. Photo by Sophie Giraud.
THE STORY “I wanted to create a beautiful, elegant story about hope and redemption as an antidote to the cynicism of our times. I wanted this story to take the form of a fairytale in that you have a humble human being who stumbles into something grander and more transcendental than anything else in her life. And then I thought it would be a great idea to juxtapose that love against something as banal and evil as the hatred between nations, which is the Cold War, and the hatred between people due to race, color, ability and gender.”
THE PAST “In a monster movie of the 50s, Michael Shannon’s Colonel Richard Strickland, the square-jawed, good-looking government agent, would be the hero, and the creature would be the villain. In The Shape of Water I wanted to reverse those things.”
In action with Michael Shannon and Sally Hawkins. Photo by Kerry Hayes.
THE WATER “Water takes the shape of whatever is holding it at the time and although water can be so gentle, it’s also the most powerful and malleable force in the universe. That’s also love, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what shape we put love into, it becomes that. Whether it’s man, woman or creature.”
THE MOVIES “I like to make movies that are liberating, that say it’s okay to be whoever you are, and it seems that at this time, this is very pertinent.”
Watch here a Behind-The-Scenes video with Guillermo del Toro:
In The Shape Of Water, sexuality is both magical and mundane
Written by Cameron Colwell on Mar 02, 2018
There’s a lot of things The Shape Of Water does brilliantly, but one of the things that feels particularly new about the story of the mute janitor, Elisa, who falls in love with a strange ‘fish-man’ held captive at a laboratory, is the sophistication in its depiction of sex.
Play
Monster movies do not have a great track record on the issue, largely using sex as a source of fear or voyeurism: Alien is one of the more obvious examples. Filled with violently phallic imagery, the screenwriter Dan O’ Bannon is on record as saying to create fear in his audiences, “I’m going to attack them sexually.”
There’s also the fact director Guillermo del Toro took his influence for the film from a childhood viewing of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, when he thought it was a love story. Now, he’s said that the film is a “counter-point” to a scene from the film, when protagonist Kay, dressed in a tight swim-suit as she glides across the lagoon, is ogled by the monster, who threatens to touch her but pulls away at the last moment. Kay becomes the centre of conflict in the film after the creature abducts her, which leads to the climactic stand-off where the creature is killed. As with other movie monsters, the fear is sexual.
Monster movies do not have a great track record … largely using sex as a source of fear or voyeurism.
Sex in The Shape Of Water, though, is much more multi-faceted: It fulfils the mundane outlet of libido in the opening, when Del Toro frankly displays Elisa masturbating in the bathtub, and is used as a means of power by the villain, Colonel Richard Strickland, whose extremely loveless marital bed belies the same pathetic need to control that sees him fastidiously studying The Power Of Positive Thinking.
Play the Pop Quiz
on Melody Facts
Elisa and the Amphibian Man first fuck underwater, after flooding the bathroom where he comes to live. In its climax, as Elisa and the Amphibian Man embrace one another, it cuts to the next scene. For a moment it seems that del Toro is shying away from the tricky logistics of how Elisa and the Amphibian Man screw, but signs of a cop-out fall away when Elisa explains to her co-worker Zelda, using hand gestures, how it works, while both of them giggle. It’s not a romanticised vision of sex, it’s one that recognises the reality that sex can both feel life-changing and be hilarious.
Sex becomes a means of both restoration and access to another world.
Also notable is the film’s diversity. There is a queer character in Giles, Elisa’s best friend and neighbour who at first resists her pleadings for help in rescuing the monster. Later, Giles misinterprets friendliness from a cute male pie shop manager as flirtation and comes close to being physically assaulted by a bigot. It’s this that provokes him to take the leap Elisa has taken, and plot to heist the Amphibian Man from his incarceration at the laboratory.
Elisa, who is mute, is disabled, an identity category whose sexuality films have a history of either ignoring or mocking, particularly in women. Elisa seems to woelessly deal with her muteness until one of the film’s most poignant scenes, in which she makes Giles deliver her signing vocally as she explains her love for the Amphibian Man: “He does not see what I lack.” It’s a loaded phrase to me, with my experience of disability: It’s not right to say that disabled people are not ‘whole,’ or are ‘broken,’ as much stigma insists. However, it’s also not wrong to say that to have the everyday pain at the burden of being recognised as failing to reach a standard of ability relieved can be inexpressibly liberating. This idea of the freedom this brings culminates in the ending, when the Amphibian Man’s touch saves Elisa from death and she is reborn, newly gilled, to a life with him in the ocean. Sex becomes a means of both restoration and access to another world, a transcendence both literal and metaphorical.
The Shape Of Water is in cinemas now.
Guillermo del Toro: “I like to make movies that are liberating. Like The Shape of Water”
Poetry, monsters, love, Gill-man and other amazing tales: the Oscar winner director explains his world
by Rebecca Wang
5th March 2018
https://hotcorn.com/en/movies/news/guillermo-del-toro-i-like-to-make-movies-that-are-liberating-like-the-shape-of-water/
ShareTweet
Good and evil, innocence and menace, the historical and the eternal, beauty and monstrosity weave in and out of each other, revealing that no darkness can ever fully defeat the light. Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water is definitely “a romantic fairy tale for grownups,” an other-worldly fable, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962, with the evolution of Gill-man, the lead antagonist of the 1954 black-and-white science fiction film Creature from the Black Lagoon. “But I don’t think the Gill-man is designed in a way that he can be a romantic lead,” said the director, “It’s beautiful, but it’s not a romantic lead.” In The Shape of Water we have Elisa (Sally Hawkins), trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a classified experiment.
Guillermo del Toro, Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones on the set of The Shape of Water.
THE BEGINNING “I sent a message to Sally (Hawkins) in 2013 that I was writing this role for her, and when we met, she told me she had already been in the middle of writing a short story about a woman who becomes a fish. She sent me her story and it was full of insights. Sally is the most genuine, unaffected person and I don’t think she is capable of doing anything that isn’t emotionally real.”
THE YEAR “What interested me is that 1962 is a time when everybody was focused on the future, while my creature is an ancient form of the deep past. People are obsessed with what’s new, with AD jingles, the moon, modern clothes, television. And in the meantime here’s this ancient force, a creature in love, who comes among them.”
Del Toro with Octavia Spencer and Sally Hawkins on the set. Photo by Sophie Giraud.
THE STORY “I wanted to create a beautiful, elegant story about hope and redemption as an antidote to the cynicism of our times. I wanted this story to take the form of a fairytale in that you have a humble human being who stumbles into something grander and more transcendental than anything else in her life. And then I thought it would be a great idea to juxtapose that love against something as banal and evil as the hatred between nations, which is the Cold War, and the hatred between people due to race, color, ability and gender.”
THE PAST “In a monster movie of the 50s, Michael Shannon’s Colonel Richard Strickland, the square-jawed, good-looking government agent, would be the hero, and the creature would be the villain. In The Shape of Water I wanted to reverse those things.”
In action with Michael Shannon and Sally Hawkins. Photo by Kerry Hayes.
THE WATER “Water takes the shape of whatever is holding it at the time and although water can be so gentle, it’s also the most powerful and malleable force in the universe. That’s also love, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what shape we put love into, it becomes that. Whether it’s man, woman or creature.”
THE MOVIES “I like to make movies that are liberating, that say it’s okay to be whoever you are, and it seems that at this time, this is very pertinent.”
Watch here a Behind-The-Scenes video with Guillermo del Toro:
In The Shape Of Water, sexuality is both magical and mundane
Written by Cameron Colwell on Mar 02, 2018
There’s a lot of things The Shape Of Water does brilliantly, but one of the things that feels particularly new about the story of the mute janitor, Elisa, who falls in love with a strange ‘fish-man’ held captive at a laboratory, is the sophistication in its depiction of sex.
Play
Monster movies do not have a great track record on the issue, largely using sex as a source of fear or voyeurism: Alien is one of the more obvious examples. Filled with violently phallic imagery, the screenwriter Dan O’ Bannon is on record as saying to create fear in his audiences, “I’m going to attack them sexually.”
There’s also the fact director Guillermo del Toro took his influence for the film from a childhood viewing of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, when he thought it was a love story. Now, he’s said that the film is a “counter-point” to a scene from the film, when protagonist Kay, dressed in a tight swim-suit as she glides across the lagoon, is ogled by the monster, who threatens to touch her but pulls away at the last moment. Kay becomes the centre of conflict in the film after the creature abducts her, which leads to the climactic stand-off where the creature is killed. As with other movie monsters, the fear is sexual.
Monster movies do not have a great track record … largely using sex as a source of fear or voyeurism.
Sex in The Shape Of Water, though, is much more multi-faceted: It fulfils the mundane outlet of libido in the opening, when Del Toro frankly displays Elisa masturbating in the bathtub, and is used as a means of power by the villain, Colonel Richard Strickland, whose extremely loveless marital bed belies the same pathetic need to control that sees him fastidiously studying The Power Of Positive Thinking.
Play the Pop Quiz
on Melody Facts
Elisa and the Amphibian Man first fuck underwater, after flooding the bathroom where he comes to live. In its climax, as Elisa and the Amphibian Man embrace one another, it cuts to the next scene. For a moment it seems that del Toro is shying away from the tricky logistics of how Elisa and the Amphibian Man screw, but signs of a cop-out fall away when Elisa explains to her co-worker Zelda, using hand gestures, how it works, while both of them giggle. It’s not a romanticised vision of sex, it’s one that recognises the reality that sex can both feel life-changing and be hilarious.
Sex becomes a means of both restoration and access to another world.
Also notable is the film’s diversity. There is a queer character in Giles, Elisa’s best friend and neighbour who at first resists her pleadings for help in rescuing the monster. Later, Giles misinterprets friendliness from a cute male pie shop manager as flirtation and comes close to being physically assaulted by a bigot. It’s this that provokes him to take the leap Elisa has taken, and plot to heist the Amphibian Man from his incarceration at the laboratory.
Elisa, who is mute, is disabled, an identity category whose sexuality films have a history of either ignoring or mocking, particularly in women. Elisa seems to woelessly deal with her muteness until one of the film’s most poignant scenes, in which she makes Giles deliver her signing vocally as she explains her love for the Amphibian Man: “He does not see what I lack.” It’s a loaded phrase to me, with my experience of disability: It’s not right to say that disabled people are not ‘whole,’ or are ‘broken,’ as much stigma insists. However, it’s also not wrong to say that to have the everyday pain at the burden of being recognised as failing to reach a standard of ability relieved can be inexpressibly liberating. This idea of the freedom this brings culminates in the ending, when the Amphibian Man’s touch saves Elisa from death and she is reborn, newly gilled, to a life with him in the ocean. Sex becomes a means of both restoration and access to another world, a transcendence both literal and metaphorical.
The Shape Of Water is in cinemas now.
