by Sean Ennenshaw
The publicity of The Shape of Water in the country is a bit hard to explain. Of course, the intention is understandable, highlighting the positioning of the romance film, and using popular lyrics from Bad Street on the posters to achieve the publicity effect. For example, "Love is like a tide of water, it will surround you and me" (Chinese-style posters are still beautiful, call and call).
Highlighting the positioning of romantic films and using brainwashing lyrics to promote can certainly expand the audience and attract more people to the cinema. This is the market positioning of the announcement. But I am afraid that this will be unpleasant. For the "movie fans" group, the suspected cross-species literary love story, and the high pressure of the Oscar halo, I am afraid that it will be "love like a tide of water and it will surround you and me." The vulgar lyrics dragged down from the clouds. Ordinary audiences who have been fooled into the cinema by the promotion of romance films thought they would watch a tear-jerking love story in the cinema, but they would be set by the heavy taste plot and the image of the male protagonist who could not produce empathy, and they would suffocate their tears. go back.
What's more, viewing the Water Shape Story as a mere romance is a dwarfing of the movie. Although, it is indeed still a good romance.
1. If love is an onion, which petal is its heart?
The first layer of The Shape of Water, as we have seen, is a love story. And it's a love story between a man fish and a dumb girl. Why are there such two roles?
What does love look like? We all seem to know.
It is Jack and Rose, Shancai and Daoming Temple, Bai Qian and Yehua. (Mary Su degree progressively
So, if Jack is not talented, and Rose is not beautiful? If Shancai is ugly, how about Daoming Temple poor? If Bai Qian is not the Empress Qingqiu, then Yehua is not the prince? Let them fall in love in the plot, can the audience still enter the play like this? Maybe, but I'm afraid the audience will not be so fascinated. At least we subconsciously feel that this kind of love is nothing worth praising.
One of the current trends in adapting web texts to IP is to constantly elevate the protagonist's conditions. Their origins are becoming more and more noble, their talents are getting higher and higher, and their beauty has risen from one in a hundred to one in a million, and even ranked first in all corners of the world.
Then they have love. Even if they naturally suppress the love of supporting actors whose background and appearance are not as good as their own, we still watch it very well. After looking at it for a long time, even we don’t know how to distinguish ourselves. Is it true that only people with beauty, wealth and noble background deserve to have love? And people with beauty, wealth and noble background are their perfect love objects? Do we yearn for love, or the beauty, wealth and noble birth under the skin of love?
None of us admit this, but subconsciously seems to admit it again. So Daniel Wu is your husband, Wang Sicong is your husband, but your husband is not your husband.
Everyone's love concept is of course different, but it can be explored with a game of peeling an onion. Suppose love is an onion, then peel it layer by layer, and the last piece left is the core of your love.
The Water Shape Story is stripped like this: strip off beauty, strip youth, strip wealth, strip social status, strip language communication, strip all useful advantages, strip everything, everything you can see It's peeled off. A man fish, a mute girl, they have nothing, they love each other.
This is the love concept that the director wants to discuss and convey. You don’t need a merit to prove that you are worthy of being loved, and you don’t need to maintain a merit to make your love last. You don’t even need to test and prove the true existence of your love. .
If you love in your heart, you have love.
Love is the feeling in your heart, where the wind in your heart can't stop blowing, there is love.
Even if it's a mute cleaner in that direction, even if it's a man who can't survive tomorrow.
The name of the movie is Water Shape Story, and the shape of water is the shape of love.
The shape of love is the shape of water. Because love is a feeling, it really exists and surrounds it tightly. You know it is there, but you can't describe it in detail.
Bai Juyi said: "The flowers are not flowers, and the fog is not fog. It's midnight and it's dawn. It's like a spring dream, and it's like a cloud and nowhere to look for it." It means the same thing. It exists, but it is like a spring dream, like a morning cloud. When you feel it, it is not a flower or a mist. You don't know how to describe it.
Bai Juyi and the director of The Shape of Water, Gilmour Del Toro, are both geniuses. They use tangible words and images to carve out the intangible feelings of love.
2. Counterattack legends of disadvantaged groups
There are two very well-defined camps in The Shape of Water. The strong white straight male cancer camp represented by the big villain Richard, behind him is a more powerful white straight male cancer general. The vulnerable group represented by Elisa includes Giles, an old gay painter, Zelda, a black fellow cleaner, and Robert, an oppressed Soviet spy scientist.
From another perspective, through the love story of Elisa and the male fish, the director strung this group of people from scattered to united, and finally rescued the mermaid from under Richard's nose.
The funniest and most ironic part of the movie is that after these people cooperated to steal the male fish, the investigators described it as an exaggeration that the group that stole the male fish was advanced in equipment, well-organized, and like a big enemy.
On the other side of the screen, the two cleaners who actually stole the man’s fish are silently lining up to check in to go to work...
This scene is actually a message from the director: Vulnerable and marginalized groups, don't belittle yourself, the strength of your unity will eventually exceed your imagination. For the strong mainstream group, you should not be triumphant, all beings are equal, and there is nothing weaker than yours in the objects you look down on.
3. Regardless of your decision in this life, you must treat yourself sincerely
If you simply let the disadvantaged groups counter-attack, it is very easy to be criticized for being politically correct. Political correctness is disliked because it can easily be portrayed as reverse discrimination.
Is it because the US officials are so passive in the movie because they are all white men? Could this group of disadvantaged groups be able to counterattack only because they are dumb girls, comrades, and blacks? Could Water Shape Story get an Oscar just because it is the perspective of a disadvantaged group?
Doesn't this become the advantage of another form of identity?
But the Shape of Water is not like this. On the road of love between Elisa and the male fish, they led everyone to realize different degrees of self-identification and reflection on secular standards. This is beyond the limit of identity, and I think it is no less than the highlight of the film's love perspective.
The heroine Elisa is the first to awaken. Although she is a mute girl, she never feels low self-esteem. On the contrary, she constantly projects the calm and gentleness, neither humble nor overbearing, neither shy nor timid, which the healthy people around her do not possess. field. Her movements are graceful, and her expression is alienated. He can hear everything, but he is rarely influenced by outside information. Her inner world is comfortable and calm, and this calmness is written on her face, which has become her unique charm. Richard will be in the middle of the film with her unsophisticated intentions, precisely because of this charm.
Moreover, Elisa was the first to see the essence through the phenomenon and accepted the male fish. In the eyes of others, the male fish is an inhuman monster, but in Elisa's eyes, she has seen a lonely individual beyond the terrifying appearance of the male fish.
Elisa's awakening is to be loyal to her inner feelings of love, and it doesn't matter how the world views her love object.
Then there are Elisa's gay roommate Giles and black colleague Zelda. These two people served as Elisa's late love assists, and they were very unsupportive of her in the early stage. Because they are obviously oppressors under the secular standards, but they all vaguely want to be accepted by the secular standards. Giles almost begged for a decent position and external recognition. When he was repeatedly frustrated, he finally turned to his inner friendship and recognized Elisa's choice. And Zelda repeatedly tolerated Richard's insulting problems in the early stage, and her efforts to rely on the mainstream aesthetic name Zelda, all revealed her desire to identify with. And she was moved by Elisa and the male fish, and became Elisa's ally, even taking the risk to save Elisa despite her husband's opposition after the incident was exposed.
Giles and Zelda's awakening is to remove the shame of skin color and sexual orientation, and establish self-identity. So they don't care how the outside treats them later, but sincerely help Elisa and do what they think is right.
In addition to the three-person core team, there are two more people, the scientist Robert and the white straight male cancer Richard.
Robert has three identities, two in a secular sense, a Soviet spy and an American scientist, and an inner science enthusiast. In the early stage, he had been wandering between the first two identities, and finally when the male fish was about to be executed, he chose to listen to his heart and protect his research object.
Robert's awakening was to abandon his spy status in the national hegemony, and chose not to help each other to protect innocent research subjects. His special status also made him pay the heaviest price.
Richard, a straight white man with cancer, is the opposite of self-identification. He is a man who completely abandons himself and embraces worldly standards. His wife is a perfect blond wife in the secular sense, but he just wants to have sex with her, and doesn't want to listen to her. His family has standard children, but he almost never communicates with his children, he just wants to sit in the car alone. His new car is a limited-edition green Cadillac, but he obviously doesn't like green cars.
His severed finger is an important metaphor. Those two fingers are obviously dead. Countless people in the movie say that these two fingers are stinky, but he never gave up these two fingers, because in the secular sense, he is self-projecting. The perfect white image needs to be complete. In the later period, he also tried to break off these two fingers, which formally revealed the self in the inner sense (imperfect finger) and the requirement of him in the secular sense (perfect finger), and the conflict became more and more serious.
Finally, when the worldly values were about to abandon him, he was completely crazy. He always only chooses the signs of success recognized by others, not what he really likes, so he looks tough, but he collapses very tightly. There is only high pressure and no peace in his heart. When he can no longer continue to succeed, this character is also It went to destruction.
There may be many reasons why The Shape of Water won the Oscar. But I think there is at least one more thing: it has some cores similar to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" which also won the Oscar, which is what Yu Xiulian said to Yu Jiaolong:
"Promise me, whatever your decision in this life, you must treat yourself sincerely."
Even if my love is a man fish, if I love it, I desperately rescued.
Even if my friend falls in love with a man fish, I am moved by her love, and I will go through fire and water and try my best to help.
There is no optimal solution in life, but the person who treats himself sincerely, even if I am embarrassed on all sides, is calm and graceful, standing proudly, beautiful and beautiful.
————This article was originally published in my public account, Sean_lalala (Sean_lalala), welcome to follow
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