In Defense Of Inter-Species Love-“The Shape Of Water”(2017)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Shape of Water, starring Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, 2017

By rights this review, the review of the 2018 Oscar for best picture The Shape of Water should have been done by Frank Jackman. While we no longer have specific titles to reflect our areas of various expertise Frank has long been the main political and cultural reporter on this publication. You ask how does a film about the improbable love affair between a disabled woman (a mute), a member of the human species, and a good looking if scaly creature from the lagoons down the Amazon warrant a political touch. Well beyond this seemingly blatant attempt to win “flavor of the month” status for yet another oppressed identity group there is the now wide- open question of whether we, meaning the human race should permit not only love between members of different species but permit different species marriage.

However, if Frank had tackled this film from that approach he would have had a hell-broth of anti-gay, anti-same sex marriage crazies to contend with who would have claimed that they had been righteously right to oppose those rights because see where does the madness end and what about the sanctity of marriage when human pair with other sentient being. Jesus it would be a blood-bath and Frank would probably have to leave town or take an alias-maybe go out among the Mormons like Allan Jackson tried to do, allegedly tried to do from what later reports by him informed us happened and see if he could hustle some work with them.

So I drew the assignment as a favor to new site manager Greg Green since he wanted to cash in on a different variation on the “boy meets girl” theme that continues this one hundred plus years later to be a huge hook for Hollywood productions (and a big money maker too). And so you have what started out a mere curiosity by Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, a “talking challenged” person (hell I don’t know what you call it although I know mute is far too cutting these days reminding me, and maybe one and all, of the timid person who came up to you in the street cards in hand claiming deafness and dumbness asking for cash donations. Asking especially when you had a date you were out to impress with your humanity and gave the person some change. Some of this I learned later when I was down on my luck was a classic scam but some of which is the only way to get cash for hard-pressed people with a disability in those days) when a mysterious creature from out in the Amazon (a creature straight out of the 1950s creep thriller The Creature From The Black Lagoon) who looks like maybe some missing link on the evolutionary trail is secreted in secret CIA-type operation location where she is a cleaning lady to try to figure out how to use the thing in the on-going Cold War then raging between the United States and the former Soviet Union.       

That curiosity about a sentient being also trying to survive in a troubled world will eventually turn into what between humans would be called love, and maybe in inter-species lingo as well. The problem is that the creature is being mistreated, mishandled by the agent in charge to the chagrin of Elisa and others including a scientist who is actually a Soviet spy. Moreover when the agent in charge is ordered to vivisect the amphibian all hell broke loose as Elisa plotted her honey’s great escape. After a few close calls and some fancy foot work Elisa gets her man out of harm’s way for a while. In the inevitable eventual confrontation before she can release her now ailing guy (not enough sea water to keep his strength up) to the open seas where he will be at home again they are both injured by that wicked Cold War agent who in return is wasted by the amphibian. Things work out okay though because this mad monk monster has some curative powers which gets he and his honey well in the open ocean. Things work out well but if and when “inter-species” marriages become the flavor of the month among progressives and others watch out all bets are off. But at least you know where the campaign got its start.