“The monstrous love affair between a beast and a beautiful woman has been played out many times in movies of all kinds, and to this day the fairy tale still holds a lot of charm for fans who have seen it all. Because such love is often put in an ugly context, people still have a desire for truth and beauty in the face of an unacceptable reality. Even if it is ugly on the outside, the genuine emotions it presents still outweigh the millions of “handsome gentlemen” who wear human skin but are dirty on the inside. The Shape of Water is a film that has recently taken bestiality to the top of its game and has been crowned “the most beautiful love of the year”.

Director Guillermo del Toro, or Gyro as his fans in China like to call him, is a director obsessed with monster fairy tales to express the dark world, a man who made Pan’s Labyrinth, and after 11 years, Gyro has once again pushed himself to the top of world cinema with a masterpiece.

The first thing that got fans interested in The Shape of Water was when it won the Best Picture award at the Venice Film Festival.

This left many fans who were unable to attend the event wondering what kind of monster movie could have convinced such a discerning jury. At the recently announced Golden Globes, Gyro also won the Best Director award, and the Critics’ Choice Awards, the quasi-weathervane of the Oscars, named it Best Picture, so there is no doubt that this film will be a strong contender for the Oscar this year.

The film begins with a narration by an old man who says that this is a true story. It is actually an artistic truth that seems unlikely to have happened, but in fact its emotions resonate with many people. The story takes place in 1962, during the Cold War, an arms race guided by two giants, the US and Russia, who want to show their minions that their muscles are the greatest of all times. But the Gyro director says that such a race was only an ideal time for white puritanical males, who lacked the care they should have for women, other ethnicities, and political dissidents. And this lack of care is reflected in the entire film.

The protagonist of the story is a woman born mute, Eliza, who then has a world of her own. She has no great ideals to change the world, but simply struggles to keep her life out of the hands of the times. She gets up in the morning, boils some eggs, makes a sandwich lunch, polishes her leather shoes, gives herself a good time in a bathtub full of water, watches a film with her old neighbour before work, goes to the shoe shop across the street from her dormitory to look at the beautiful high heels, or even improvises a tap dance like in the film.

When riding the bus, she listens to the rain, hums a couple of tunes, and leans against the window to enjoy a nap. She can’t speak, she communicates in sign language, she’s single, she lives a simple life, but she has her own little fortune and is as happy as a bird in her own life.

The place where Eliza works is a secret research base in the United States at the time, where the country’s top talents and the world’s most sophisticated future equipment are gathered, and any piece of equipment that leaves here could shake the world. Apparently, Eliza didn’t care about any of this, she just quietly worked as a caretaker, listening to the endless chatter of her black colleagues at work and enjoying her sandwich in between breaks. But with the arrival of a mysterious research subject, Eliza’s heart begins to develop more beautiful fantasies.

This is a male mermaid found from South America, relying on his gills to breathe, living in the water, strangely ugly and imprisoned in a water cage, but with his own independent thoughts and emotions like humans, loving music and food. One is a monster with an uncanny appearance, the other a mute, withdrawn woman, and two lonely souls have since had an incredible collision.

Eliza develops the idea of rescuing him from his prison, sending him to the sea, or even eloping together, and as soon as this idea is out of reach, it is the brutal and ruthless American and Russian agents who stand in their way. What follows is a beautiful and sadistic love story that the director will let us see. Perhaps at the beginning we are intimidated by the grotesque and ugly male mermaid, but as the plot unfolds and the relationship between the hero and heroine deepens, we are left in awe of how beautiful and moving this creature is.

Throughout the film we are left in awe of the director’s ability to flesh out the story with details that seem careless but are in fact hidden at every step. While Eliza and the fat black woman are scrubbing the floor, the workroom is a place with what looks like spacecraft parts, but against the backdrop of the black woman flirting with her husband, the spacecraft with its ambitions of world domination seems small and irrelevant.

This is not to say that Eliza is unsympathetic, but to emphasise the simple simplicity of her world. Not concerned with politics, not concerned with the current situation, not concerned with her surroundings, but only with the little things in her heart.

The fire does not attract her attention, but the two movie tickets presented by the landlord do stop her in her tracks. The whole film, in addition to its portrayal of the mute heroine, is also full of concern for other marginalised people. The old neighbour, a painter abandoned by the times, is also a gay man who often goes out and buys cakes he doesn’t like for the sake of the other. Love is sometimes so helpless, but with the warmth of mutual care behind it.

After escaping from the hostel, the male mermaid thinks not of disappearing into the sea, but of being captivated by the story playing in the cinema – what a romantic and soft heart one has to have to come up with such an idea. The black female colleague, after Eliza’s defection, thinks of stopping this stupid act for fear of putting her behind bars, and then finally is moved by her idea and even helps her; after Eliza is exposed, the first thing she thinks of is rushing to inform her.

It makes this fat, dark and nagging woman, full of the light of a big sister, lovely and warm. Putting such a kind of care is all the more precious in a particular era like 1962, which was full of conspiratorial struggles, abandonment and utilitarian hooks.

No wonder the director said that this divided era was the perfect time to tell a love story, for how beautiful and romantic it is to find a soul of truth and beauty in an ugly and unpleasant world! It’s the most beautiful love story of the year, and it’s the warmest care for the marginalised!