Speaking of Gilmour del Toro, the first thing that comes to mind must be the famous "Pan's Labyrinth", an adult fairy tale wandering between dangerous illusions and cruel reality. In fact, the aesthetics of the spinning top is implemented in almost every film that has been through his hands. The ghastly architectural design in "Scarlet Peak" and "Ghost Boys' House", the seemingly old and dirty steam machine model style extensively used in "Pacific Rim" and "Hellboy", including the film he participated in as a producer "Human-Beast Hybrid", both the subject matter and the art design reveal a deep sense of deja vu. In addition to the movie, Gyro also participated in the production of the game "PT", which had died, but received a large number of loyal fans with just a demo, and the talented game production that once saved the famous game company KONAMI on the verge of bankruptcy. Hideo Ren Kojima has joined forces. It can be said that the tentacles of the top have broken through the film circle long ago and have expanded into the field of visual art, creating an aesthetic system with a strong personal mark.
Tuluo has been exposed to film art since he was a teenager. He has been a director, actor, screenwriter, producer, and fine art for decades. He is a standard all-round talent and has won numerous honors along the way. Looking at his resume, we can see that the top is swinging back and forth between commerce and art, and it is volatile in conforming to popular culture and expressing personal feelings. "The Shape of Water", as a work that took six years to finally be born, is undoubtedly art and sentimental. The film tells the touching love story between the dumb Elsa and a half-man, half-fish monster. The story is set against the background of the Soviet-American Cold War. It uses a magical and naive lens to explore realistic issues including race, gender, and class. , Of course, aside from everything, the most attractive thing is the "Beauty and the Beast" love affair.
The hand is a very important emotional carrier in the film. Elsa can't speak, and the expression of emotions is naturally done by hands. In addition to the function of replacing language, the touching and gripping of hands also directly establishes an intimate connection between different species. For thousands of years, the development of language civilization has created gorgeous rhetoric, complex structures, endless adjectives and clauses, but in another sense, this complexity has gradually concealed what we really want to express. Sweet and pleasant words and sentences are made up of language, and lies and textual violence are also conveyed by language. In other words, although hands are a means of communication, they also carry violence and are a tool for violence. The big villain Richard had two fingers bitten off by the murloc not long after he appeared on the scene. When the doctor took the broken finger back, his blood vessels and nervous system were unable to recover and he became black and rotted day by day. With this incomplete hand, Richard violently attacked the murloc, tortured scientists who disobeyed him, and finally pulled out his severed finger with his own hands even after knowing that the fingers could no longer be kept.
In the setting of the spinning top, Richard is a character without emotion, a machine purely worshiping and craving for power. Therefore, the hand does not have any communication function in his cognition, but is only a tool. . The role of Richard is particularly interesting, and Michael Shannon has contributed a perfect performance that makes everyone hateful. As a thoroughly white elitist, Richard has an impeccable family. The wife is a blond housewife at home, wearing a pettiskirt and stepping on high heels to bake cakes and cookies. There is a son and a daughter. From dressing to words and deeds, she seems to walk straight down from an English textbook. However, for Richard, this most perfect middle-class family is actually the same as his teal Cadillac, but it is just a stepping stone on his way to becoming a successful man in the secular sense.
In front of scientists, he arrogantly shows contempt and discrimination towards women and blacks, and straightforwardly expresses his desire for abusive and tyrannical behavior, and only promises in front of generals of higher rank. Richard’s words and deeds are expressions that break away from the social code of conduct and moral constraints, and can also be seen as the most self-evident expression of humanity. In him, we can more or less find that trace. The idea that Silk suddenly appeared in our minds was immediately stifled because of "political incorrectness". Similarly, when he found that the bullet shot into the murloc's heart couldn't kill it, he sent out a feeling of "Fuck, you are a God", and then was killed in seconds. Richard once said before: "God created mankind in his own image. God is like man, just like me." The director deliberately gave the dead Richard a close-up, with a complex expression frozen on his face. It was about an expression of shock mixed with convincing conviction. Being killed by a superior god instead of the "second-class citizen" he had always looked down upon was probably the best and most ironic ending for Richard.
The world of "The Shape of Water" is a world of either good or evil. The facial makeup and black-and-white distinction of the characters are the reasons for the fairy tale texture of the film. It's as if we will never see Richard turn around to feed the stray dogs after humiliating Elsa, and we never have to worry that the love between Elsa and the murloc will be shattered due to various practical factors. This dichotomy gives us a sense of security in the process of watching movies, and there will be no sudden exposure of humanity. What we see in some characters is only the good side of our subconscious, as if we really believe, Only in the fairy tale of love, the prince and princess will live happily together forever.
In a short film called "Welcome To Bleak House", Gyro shows his entire collection of the villa, sculptures, installations, models, paintings, books, and figures. His hobbies are all kinds of strange powers and teeth and claws. Mixed with Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo, Journey to the West, and Bruce Lee. Watching the top proudly displaying the huge treasures he has collected and created throughout his life, it is hard not to notice that the part of his eyes and heart that belongs to the child is shining, and it is this part that supports him to create the grotesque. The whimsical world.
Gyro's interpretation of love is also full of childish innocence, love stories that are hugely different from each other, but can still break through the huge practical resistance at a glance and finally come together. In "The Shape of Water", Alyssa initially used eggs as food to "catch" the mermaid. After the relationship between the two became closer, she brought the record player, and the two sang and danced to the music. From eggs to records, it is the transformation from material food that only satisfies appetites to spiritual food that enriches the senses. In this process, Elsa has transformed from a domesticator to a sharer.
Sharing feelings and emotions is the beginning of love.
Elsa explained the love between herself and the murloc to her companion. She said: “When he looked at me, the way he looked at me was as if he didn’t feel that I was missing anything. Nor would I feel that I was incomplete. . What he saw is the real me. "Each of us, perhaps, is looking forward to meeting someone who still chooses to love after seeing through the skin and the soul. Not because of compassion, not because of loneliness, not because of possessiveness, not because of our completeness or incompleteness, but because of love for all our shapes like water that wraps us without gaps.
In the bones, the top believes in soul and love. The back of the calendar that Elsa tore off says "Time is just a river from the past." This sentence implies both the origin of the scar on Elsa's neck and her The extraordinary life experience also tells the history of the birth of this story: since the age of six, this sincere love story has been quietly lying on the bottom of the top of the river, and time carries the continuous polishing of the current. Polished, and now it has finally been picked up. We look at this story as if the murloc watched the hard work of being whipped by the slave owner on the screen in a movie theater. Amidst the changes of light and shadow, what we saw was the reflected self and the Tibetan. The most secret desire in my heart.
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