The Shape of Water (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017, Guillermo Del Toro)

I had not planned to see it, at least not in theatres, but I was in the company of somebody very dear to my heart who desperately wanted to see it before it would get all those Oscars, so I decided to give it a try. What shall I say? It was a bit better than I had expected, but like most of this director's work, it didn't do much for me. 

Most of you will know that it tells a story about a forbidden love. Sally Hawkins is a mute custodian at a secret government laboratory where an amphibious creature, captured in the Andes, is studied by a team of scientists and put to some grueling tests. While visiting him, the woman and the creature start developing a strong bond. Eventually they will fall in love. In most classic love stories of this type - Romeo & Juliet, Anna Karenina, even Titanic - the barriers are social, and the lovers die in each others' arms. In the case of Del Toro's movie the barriers are biological and - this is probably the most original angle - the lovers manage to overcome the ultimate barrier: Love literally overcomes Death, the lovers literally live happily ever after. 

That's all okay, this is a fairy tale with horror influences (and some religious overtones), The Beauty and the Beast with a sniff of the Frankenstein myth. The story is set in 1962 Baltimore, during the days of the Cold War and both Super Powers are interested in the creature; the espionage story adds some suspense to the plot, but be forewarned: some of the scenes of violence and torture are quite gruesome. The shape of Water is by no means a bad movie, it's a good one that will no doubt hold your attention, but the problem - at least my problem - is that you sense that the movie is desperately trying to *say* something, no doubt something of great importance. In interviews the director himself mentioned the refugee crisis. In his words this was a Hollywood movie made by an immigrant. True of course, but I don't care for messages, at least not in movies. Messages belong in bottles, and if I need one, I pick one up at the seashore. 

If you'll look past the gloss, you'll notice that The Shape of Water is a rather empty audience pleaser that is not as original as it may seem. But it's wonderfully acted and beautifully made. Sally Hawkins is sweet and winsome (you can't think of anybody else in this role) and the creature looks alive, will never give you the idea you're looking at the proverbial 'man in a suit'. And the sugary message will no doubt please moviegoers and Academies. Four Oscars you say? Thought so.

⭐⭐½

Dir: Guillermo del Toro - Cast: Sally Hawkins (Elisa), Michael Shannon (Strickland), Richard Jenkins (Giles), Octavia Spencer (Zelda), Michael Stuhlbarg (Dimitri Mosenkov/Dr. Robert Hoffstetler), Nigel Bennett (Mihalkov), Lauren Lee Smith (Elaine Strickland), John Kapelos (Mr. Arzoumanian), Martin Roach (Brewster)

M*A*S*H (1970, Robert Altman)

The movie, not the TV-show. It was a smash hit in theatres when I was a teenager and we all went to see it, even when we didn't have the right age (it had an '18 rating'). Today, half a century later, it's still an entertaining movie, but it's hard to understand why an entire generation went raving mad about it.

MASH is set during the Korean war (1950-1953), but the subtext is the war in Vietnam. The raunchy jokes, the haircuts and moustaches are all Sixties, not Fifties. Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould are Hawkeye and Trapper John, surgeons in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (hence the title). They are not passionate about the war, but dedicated to saving people's lives. They reject protocol and view those who respect it with cold contempt. Sutherland and Gould look and behave like hippies and the growing protests against the Vietnam War must have helped the movie a lot: it was interpreted as a protest to America's military operations in the Far East. Mash was anti-establishment, Mash was counterculture, Mash was ahead of its time. At least we thought it was all these things. 

The movie is a collection of vignettes, with hardly any coherent narrative. Director Robert Altman realized his episodic movie needed more structure and therefore added a series of speaker announcements to connect the different episodes. Those announcements are occasionally funny, but don't really solve the problem: the whole thing still feels rather disjointed.

As said, Mash is still enjoyable, the episodic action has a nice flow and the actors are very good. Sutherland and Gould underplay their roles, which suits the material very well, and Sally Kellerman is a delight as Major Margaret 'Hotlips' Houlihan, the straitlaced, yet lascivious nurse who is the obvious target of many of the boys' practical jokes. But there's this feeling that it belongs to another era. Above all, it's not as funny as it used to be. Mash was an immensely popular movie and the raunchy jokes - like Hotlip's infamous shower scene - seem to have influenced directors of sex comedies, a popular subgenres from the first half of the Seventies. What used to be daring and outrageously funny may now give you the idea that you're watching one the entries in the long running Porky's series.

⭐⭐⭐½

1970 - Dir: Robert Altman - Cast: Donald Sutherland (Hawkeye), Elliot Gould (Trapper John), Sally Kellerman (Hotlips), Tom Skerritt (Duke), Robert Duvall (Major Burns), Roger Bowen (Lt.-Col. Blake), Jo Ann Pflug (Dish), Gary Burghoff (Radar)

Le Magnifique (1973)

One of Belmondo's better movies from the Seventies.  At first glance it looks like a sequel to L'Homme de Rio, the spoofy espionage flick he had made a decade earlier (with the same director), but Le Magnifique goes one step further: Belmondo not only plays the superspy, but also the author who created him, turning the movie into a *spoof of a spoof*.  

Belmondo is François Merlin, a social pariah who has written 42 pulp novels about a super hero called Bob St. Clair. François has modeled Bob after himself, but in his fantasy world Bob is of course everything his creator is not: he's the epitome of courage and charm, an infallible action hero and a lady killer. François can't pay his bills and is madly in love with his neighbor, Christine, a sociology student (played by Jacqueline Bisset!), who has no eyes for him. In the novels Christine has become Tatiana, Bob's lover and side-kick ...

Veering between François's fantasy world and his everyday life, the film not only parodies the espionage genre à la James Bond, but also Belmondo's own screen persona. The script is a bit of a mishmash, which is no wonder if you know its genesis: It was co-written by director de Broca and Francis Veber (best known for comedies like La Chèvre and Les Compères, both starring Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard), but the two couldn't agree on some aspects of the story (most of them related to Jacqueline Bisset's character) and eventually a script doctor was hired to finish the job (*1). Some of the gory jokes may look tasteless today, but they were meant to poke fun at the blood-spattered cinema à la Peckinpah that was very popular in those days. Overall Le Magnifique is quite funny, occasionally even touching. And Jolie Jacqueline is pure eye candy.

⭐⭐⭐

Note:

* (1) According to some sources Italian actor Vittorio Caprioli also contributed to the final script. To avoid any possible legal action by one of the people concerned, nobody - not even De Broca and Veber - was credited for his work.

1973 - Dir: Philippe De Broca - Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo (François/Bob St. Clair), Jacqueline Bisset (Christine/Tatiana), Vittorio Caprioli (Charron/Karpof), Jean Lefèbvre, Hubert Deschamps, Hans Meyer - Music: Claude Bolling