Shape of Water - Spoil it for me please (Spoilers)

"...I couldnt emotionally feel anything for any of the characters (other than general sorrow for the aqua-man, but not enough to bring me to tears) and it felt like it dragged on forever and had mostly one-sided flat/retarded characters."

That's surprising. Everywhere I read, they're praising Salky Hawkins.

I didn't think they were one dimensional, but the overall style of the characters and look of the movie was not exactly to my taste. i did like the sounds in the movie though, like of Zod crunching on his hard candy, and all the little sound details. i guess it was sorta refreshing to see that dark old school "dark city" type of sets, but it's not my personal fave.

i fell asleep a little but i think you are right about Aquaman.

Actually, having viewed Dunkirk twice in the theater (in Extreme Digital and in IMAX), I feel that is overrated—at least by some (not all) critics and by the Golden Globe voters who granted the movie a Best Picture nomination. I do not dislike the film—I consider it "decent/pretty good," meaning a little above average—and it is visually spectacular and atmospheric. But its preoccupation with visual spectacle and its decision to braid three different narratives together—constantly intercutting between them—preclude the sustained character development and thematic focus that the movie needed, and could have achieved by featuring just one or two narratives, in order to be something greater and to play less mechanically.

***Although I do not provide specific plot spoilers for The Shape of Water in the following comments, I do suggest themes, ideas, developments, and symbols that you might want to uncover for yourself if you have not yet seen the film.***

I did like The Shape of Water—I deemed it "good" and plan to see it again. Nora, from your comments, my sense (and I am just guessing) is that the reason why the film failed to work for you is that you are viewing it "straight"—too literally, in other words. The Shape of Water is really a satire, farcical and fantastical yet with a romantic soul and ironic sweetness. The movie constitutes a satire of Cold War-era espionage films and the conventions, prejudices, bigotries, and repressions of their day, blending that satire with the amusingly lowbrow science-fiction genre of that time period (1950s, early-to-mid 1960s). That farcical and fantastical blending, and the way that writer-director Guillermo del Torro uses it as a social allegory, is somewhat ingenious.

The quasi-human creature (almost a male mermaid of sorts) serves as a metaphor for the "other"—blacks, gays, foreigners, mutes, mute women who men ignore sexually, babies that parents rejected—and thus incurs empathy from the main characters in the movie (aside from the repressed and repressive agent who seeks to hunt it down), those who are outcasts or misfits of one sort or another. And the creature is more than the equivalent of a suffering cat or dog, for he also amounts to a sexual outlet for a woman who has been unable to enjoy the usual sexual access due to her condition and status as an outcast. Moreover, the fact that he is monstrous yet quasi-human allows him to serve as a metaphor for other outcasts in a way that would not have been possible with a cat or dog. However, the fact that he embodies a science-fiction creature from that cinematic era, as opposed to an actual human being or some modern CGI creation, fosters balancing humor. The film is at once serious yet not too serious, stylish yet pulpy in the way that it delightfully toys with our cinematic past, one full of hokey charms or anachronisms. The Shape of Water is not supposed to be the typically stirring Oscar bait or an emotionally "straight" movie; rather, it is a playful and creative pastiche that also offers social intelligence and transcendent sweetness. I would analogize the film to the recent Suburbicon, another historical farce that I also deemed "good," but The Shape of Water is more daring, creative, and resonant. 

The only aspect of The Shape of Water that I did not like was the opening and initial scenes, as I felt that the constant camera movement and tracking shots, while smooth, proved gratuitous and pretentious. (I will see how that aspect plays for me upon a second screening, perhaps this week.) But overall, the movie is impressive visually as well, with the consistent focus on shades of gray, blue, green, and "teal" and the backlighting in certain scenes that again evokes the film's sense of cinematic homage and satire. 

I am reminded of an anecdote regarding the vintage Italian Western For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965). Upon arriving in Rome, Lee Van Cleef, who had guest-starred in the television series Rawhide the previous year and thus already knew his co-star, Clint Eastwood, expressed some doubts regarding this new movie that he had agreed to star in. Eastwood, who of course had just starred in Leone's epochal A Fistful of Dollars the previous year, told Van Cleef that if he approached For a Few Dollars More as a classical Western, matters would not work. Eastwood advised Van Cleef to view A Fistful of Dollars in order to grasp Leone's ironic, iconoclastic, iconographic, and irreverent spirit—and Van Cleef ended up capturing that spirit sublimely in For a Few Dollars More and then in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). 

Well, The Shape of Water is kind of like that—it is an ironic and humorous movie where the profundity is sort of hazily suggested rather than clearly proven. If one looks too hard at it, or looks for the clear proof (if you will), the film may not work. 

Come to think of it, The Shape of Water may constitute a less overtly humorous and more unpretentious version of the Oscar-laden Birdman from three years ago—the stories and themes are completely different, yet some of the cinematic sensibilities may be similar. 

For the record, I had not read del Toro's comments before offering my own. (We use some of the same words to describe his film.) 

Dobie Gillis clues one in to the era.
The Show was on 1959-1963. 1964 Bob Denver was Gilligan.

www.indiewire.com/2017/11/guillermo-del-toro-antiques-roadshow-the-shape-of-water-sally-hawkins-1201899009/#!

www.gq.com/story/how-the-shape-of-water-made-you-believe-a-woman-could-love-a-water-monster


www.inverse.com/article/38840-the-shape-of-water-doug-jones-interview

Don't forget this is the early 60s.
The girl being mute would have been more of a thing in a world where the n word & such flowed easily. In the 70s when I was a teen I know some would have called her a "retard" for her inability to speak because they were misinformed oafs.

My child when I pointed out the creatures power restored, did not create said Del Toro said Eliza was placed there for the creature, his reward as it were for being God to that tribe. 

In that light, she had to remain pure for him. 

Ignoring that, if she is The One Meant For Him, no one else would satisfy her.

And we don't actually know about her virginity.
She may have had lovers, just none at this time.