Patreon Letter: 29th September 2018 (Patreon)

It's Jackson here with the patreon letter! I haven't done much other than the usual podcast prep this week (side note: Tatami Galaxy is incredible, we're recording the Beach House tomorrow and you absolutely owe it to yourself to watch that show), but I did watch a whole movie. Which was fun. Movies are good, I should get back into them.

I watched the Best Picture winner 2018: The Shape of Water. Scientists have been studying this phenomena for years and have not yet found the cause, but their findings confirmed that winning best picture made this movie between 10-15% worse. Despite this unfortunate side effect, the movie is still pretty good. Not as good as I had heard, not as disappointing as I had feared, just a very good Del Toro movie. It's no Hellboy 2 but then again, what is?

There is something unsatisfying tame about The Shape of Water. In making a movie about the understandable urge to want to fuck the monster that could be accepted by an audience of Oscar voters, the monster has been stripped of all sense of danger and sexuality that makes him fuckable. Instead he is as misunderstood and innocent as our mute protagonist, which makes for a heartwarming and fun movie, but also one that feels like the least subversive possible movie you could make about fucking a fish man.

Where The Shape of Water shines is in its side characters. Every character in the film is deeply lonely, and while that is at its most broad and safe in the relationship between a mute woman full of romantic hope and a tragically imprisoned fish man, the side characters get to be more coarse in their loneliness. The standout character of the film is Giles, an old closeted gay man who hasn't been able to find connection in his life due to the difficulties of being a gay man in the early 20th century. In the film's best scene, he monologues to the creature that when he looks at in the mirror he only recognizes his eyes, trapped in the face of an old man who never had the chance to be young. It is heartbreaking and real in a way the fairytale romance at the heart of the movie just isn't able to be.

Speaking of side characters, let's talk about what matters. 

Aristotle famously said that all narratives could ultimately been reduced into one of the three essential stories. Man vs Man, Man vs Beast, and Michael Stuhlbarg vs Forces So Much Larger Than Him That No Matter How Valiantly He May Struggle He Is Impotent To Change His Tragic Fate. The Shape of Water is the latter. Michael Stuhlbarg is in this movie as a Russian double agent, who takes action when he finds the Americans plan to kill the creature. Then shock of all shock: the Russians decide to kill the creature too! He's having a bad time and he's basically spends every scene squirming in his own insignificance.

I fucking love Michael Stuhlbarg. A Serious Man is the best movie ever made. Thank you.

So yeah, The Shape of Water is fine! It's fine. There's a really cool heist sequence half way through that was very fun. Del Toro makes great movies. Its only real problem is that its premise (fuck the monster) is incompatible with its goal (fairytale romance that 60 year old oscar voters will vote for) and the latter ends up winning out. But I knew that going in and was still ultimately won over. Good movie. Good time.

Right. That's it. I'm off to watch a bunch of anime so I can talk about a bunch of anime into microphones tomorrow.

-Jackson