###And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make…###
I am sure that Guillermo del Toro has found the big secret - have fun with the things you create, so you can create effortlessly and with endless pleasure. That is why his films have a special radiance, similar to a halo of a different color because he has put a piece of his soul in each of them and they have been an integral part of it within (at least) several years.
"The Shape of Water", the latest creation of the crazy and super-talented Mexican, envelops viewers with the tranquil foliage of patinated bronze - with a sense of security, uniqueness and fabulous uniqueness.
A story can always begin with a "Once upon a time" - this is the magical formula capable of unlocking imagination in which mysterious water containers have been guarded more than half a century ago in a secret laboratory by a relentless agent; and in these water reservoirs a strange being tortured, charms a lonely cleaner, and she pulls him out of the forced prison, and after a lot of gaits, they both find freedom and merge their hearts. In summary, the plot sounds strange, crazy and somewhat candied, and might have become such a film if all the metamorphoses did not happen in Guillermo del Toro's head.
He chooses the princess of his story to be a cleaner, puts her in front of a fateful choice in extraordinary circumstances and throws her in the arms of a creature of mysterious latitudes that resembles a man-amphibian. Their love story goes as a lily of water - unexpectedly, white and unperturbed by words unspoken by prejudice, instinctive, passionate and fearless. In the name of that feeling, the heroine risks everything because life would not make sense to her if she does not find the strength to follow the intuition - she feels that her only chance to see her true reflection is in the eyes of the one who accepts her unreservedly fictional pretensions, no social conventions, no universal fakes.
Del Toro, in a tendentious manner, has arranged all his characters out of the framework of traditional expectations - fantastic, unbalanced, inconspicuous, unclouded, unconventional and absolutely unexpected - they create a real magical net in the eyes of viewers to cover the mirror of reality. Cinema is precisely this - magic - and with its help the story comes alive outside, beyond and despite all the known tricks.
One of the brave director's moves is the extraordinary casting - with Sally Hawkins's soft tenderness, with the patient, strange strangeness of his loving Doug Jones, Michael Shannon's cruel chameleon seamlessness, Richard Jenkins's delicate vulnerability, Michael Schulbarg's exact inclusions, and Octavia Spencer. Like Del Toro sculpting his amphibian prince - with a complete suit, impressive light details, a charm that exudes power, he shapes the other heroes and as a skillful puppeteer puts everyone at the most exact place in history. Pragmatic and logical are the reasons why the action unfolds in the middle of the last century - except that there is a chance to enjoy a décor, that is the time when any conspiracy may occur, including spy on the part of a Soviet agent.
Built with a budget of less than $ 20 million, it received over 200 awards and nominations for only the last four months of 2017 after his premiere in Venice, honored by almost every cinema critic community in the world as one of the masterpieces of 2017, the work of Guillermo del Toro deserves all the superlatives. It's no accident that the Hollywood foreign press awards the film to all of them with nominations in seven categories - people like beautifully narrated stories, this is the truth. ![]
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