Lovestruck: The Shape of Water’s lessons of love from kinship that sees beyond a monstrous form

Guillermo del Toro is never one to shy away from pushing boundaries, something he does in beautifully thought-provoking ways through his ethereal fantasy tales. The skilled storyteller has mastered storytelling that on the surface, may seem otherworldly and at times even shocking, but still manages to invoke human emotion through its magnificent blend of fantasy and humanity.

The filmmaker, as he has stated on several occasions, has a particular fondness for monsters, embracing them in a way few filmmakers have before him. del Toro’s monsters are not harbingers of death or bad omens, they are rarely vicious and hostile and the only trait they seem to share with their fellow on-screen creatures is the monstrosities in their appearance. With his approaching of the creature trope with love and affection, del Toro has brought about a transformative change, in which the silver screen has seen its monsters, his loving gaze weaving stories centred around them that deal with poignant themes, even giving them their own enchantingly beautiful love stories. The Shape of Water is one such cinematic masterpiece of his that not only challenges traditional views of ‘monstrosity’, but also that of love.

The film introduces us to Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), a mute, lonely cleaner at a top-secret government facility whose only friends in life are her co-worker and her equally lonely elderly neighbour. The mundanity of her everyday life is disrupted when she comes across a strange amphibian creature held captive at her place of work. As she spends more time with the humanoid creature, who is subjected to barbaric torture at the hands of officials, Elisa develops a close and powerful bond with the creature and decides to free him and lead him back to his home, the ocean.

With its hues of a bestial love story, The Shape of Water doesn't seem like the kind of film that would work, let alone be celebrated as a masterpiece and earn itself an Academy Award. The brilliantly told story, the stellar performances by an expert cast, transporting visuals and bewitching music aside, what struck me most about the unconventional love story was the reason Elisa fell so deeply in love with the ‘monster’. Rather than view him as an object of curiosity, or a ‘savage’ creature magnitudes beneath her, or even an awe-inspiring godly being who could easily cause her mortal harm, Elisa develops an odd shot of kinship with him, her attitude towards the creature reflecting in how she chooses to address it as ‘him’. It could have been argued that it was sympathy, as anyone with a shred of humanity would feel towards a harmed sentient being, without having to bring in ‘love’ of any kind at all. The desperate pleas she makes to her friend to help her get the creature to safety, reveal how wrong that assumption could be.

Elisa bases her kinship with the lonesome creature on how similar the two are. Choking with emotion, she answers her own question of what she thinks she is. Like ‘him’, her creature-kin, she has no voice, not in the way that makes other people hear her, makes other people listen. While even her own close friend chose to ignore her desperation the first time, she tried to enlist his help. When she is not ignored, she is made an object of curiosity, or sympathy, or reduced to an object of lust. Asking her friend to voice out her signs, loudly, powerfully, she says, “When he looks at me, the way he looks at me... He does not know, what I lack... Or - how - I am incomplete. He sees me, for what I - am, as I am.”

And what of the monster? Maybe his affection towards Elisa came out of her kindness to him in his time of need; or perhaps her love for him, set against a background of years of reverence he had received from those that saw him as a God, made him feel something he had never experienced and he wanted to hold on to it for as long as possible. Or maybe it was something entirely different and obscure that no one except del Toro can answer to. But despite these uncertainties, the profound love the creature held for Elisa makes the answers to these questions seem insignificant.

In a world where few understood them, they understood and truly saw each other in a way that no one had before, and they fall in love.

The Shape of Water is available to stream on Disney+Hotstar.