[1] Guillermo del Toros’s The Shape of Water is the
latest meeting of the whimsical and the grotesque. The plot
unfolds as follows: in the 1950s, Elisa is a cleaner at a military
[4] research laboratory, who happens also to be mute, which places
her among other minorities without a say: there is her
African-American colleague Zelda and her neighbour, the artist
[7] Giles, who is gay. The screenplay brings together the
disenfranchised to save a fellow outcast.
The amphibious monster kept captive at the lab
[10] doesn’t have a name, and his idea of a witty and humorous
conversation is to roar in your face. But Elisa takes a shine to
him. “When he looks at me, he doesn’t know what I lack or
[13] how I am incomplete.”
In this film watertight ideas fight for space with flawed
ones. It begins with a dream sequence in which Elisa’s
[16] apartment is submerged. When the scene is repeated later for
real, causing only a minor leak in the house below, the rational
mind has too many objections (the floor would collapse!) for
[19] the fantasy to survive. An amphibious humanoid with magic
powers we can believe, but a flooded apartment that is as good
as new one scene later doesn’t stand up. There are other
[22] discrepancies too — like the sophisticated CCTV system in
1962, or the creature’s ability to wipe away the bulletholes in
his own body, sealing up the wounds, ET-style.
Newstatesman, February 9th, 2018 (adapted)
Based on the text above, judge of following item.
“The plot unfolds as follows” (l. 2 and 3) can be correctly rewritten as This is the moral of the story.