bemusedlybespectacled:

actually while i’m still on the subject of the shape of water, can I just say I highkey love how unsubtle it was

like I’m generally a fan of metaphor and allegory, like, I LIKE metaphor and allegory. it tends to add a layer of softness to what would otherwise be very blunt stories

but this was so not that and it managed to do it WELL. like, the movie does not fuck around. the bad guy is the epitome of white suburbia, with a young, put-together wife and two kids. he’s also a racist, sexist pig who delights in tormenting things that are weaker than himself because he’s deeply insecure and craves approval from other men, and feels like he has to overcompensate by buying fancy cars and using a comically-oversized cattle prod (can we say phallic symbol?). he’s literally toxically masculine, what with his rotting gangrenous fingers and shitty personal hygeine.

the main characters are a disabled woman, a black woman, a gay man, and a communist. they’re not metaphors for being outcast from society, they actually are those things. and they kick the asses of the military scientists to the point that the directors are convinced that the heist was pulled off by a soviet strike team.

and like, at no point did I drop out of my suspension of disbelief. at no point was I like “this is a little too over the top.” hell fucking no. I sat there for two hours and was like #same. elisa masturbates for three minutes every morning: #same. zelda complains about how men demand emotional labor and do jack shit in return: #same. giles has the world’s most adorable doomed gay crush on the pie guy: #same.

and the entire time you keep waiting for something truly awful to happen. for there to be an unhappy ending. and bad things happen, don’t get me wrong, but never to the point where I felt like they were happening just to hurt the audience. and there is a happy ending. unambiguously so.

i love this fish fucking movie.