I recently saw the movie, The Shape of Water. It brought to my attention the overt worldviews that movies have been propagating recently. This one was about a mute girl, working as a janitor in a research facility, who falls in love with a creature being kept there.
IMDb’s plot summary refers to Sally Hawkins’ character, the protagonist heroine, Elisa, as:
a “lonely” janitor.
Her character has been mute since infancy due to a throat injury, leaving her with scars on her neck. Needless to say, SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW.
Loneliness is a very pervasive theme in this movie, to the extent that every character could be classified as lonely. When we examine and try to analyze the worldview being asserted by this film, we have an instant diagnosis of the problem with the world. As Christians, our worldview says that sin is the problem in this world, but in the Shape of Wateruniverse, the problem that pervades the hearts of every living soul is loneliness. But the type of loneliness that this movie portrays is one of empty lust and physical non-fulfillment, not the loneliness of the cosmic rebel who experiences disunity with God.
Elisa, being a mute, is isolated from the world to begin with. The only real relationships she has in life are with her neighbor, Giles, a gay man in his fifties, and Zelda, her co-worker who is so neglected by her husband that she talks to Elisa incessantly, and even speaks on her behalf when other people ask her questions.
Strickland, the antagonist of the story, is the agent who captured the creature being held in the facility. He’s a stern man, and considers himself the best at what he does. His wife gives off a familiar air of neglect and physical dissatisfaction, stemming from Strickland’s over working. It’s his drive to live up to his own reputation of himself that eventually gets him killed. His isolation is one of arrogance and perceived superiority. When he’s tasked with killing the creature to keep the Russians from using it for evil, he almost revels at the chance.
After developing a friendship with the creature, Elisa decides to free it in order to save its life. This comes after a crisis of identity, wondering what the difference between her and the creature is. Ironically, Strickland had already given her a satisfying answer to this conundrum; humans are made in the image of God, and the creature isn’t. When Zelda tells him that she doesn’t know what God looks like, he replies, “He looks like me… and you… probably a little more like me.” I was glad to see a sci-fi movie that dealt with questions like this, since theologically complex concepts are part of the legacy of the genre. Elisa doesn’t see any such distinction between the creature and herself. You can see that the driving force of her inner-conflict is her loneliness when she tells Giles that the creature is always glad to see her, and doesn’t see her faults or what she’s lacking, only her for who she is.
Giles initially doesn’t want to help Elisa free the creature, given the legal ramifications. But his own loneliness later drives him to join the team. After his risky advances on a younger man who works in his favorite pie shop fall flat, almost leading to violence, he realizes that Elisa is all he has, and he wants her to be happy. Clearly his multitude of cats were of no value to him as companionship, since he barely bats an eye when the creature kills his pet, Pandora.
They successfully free the creature, and begin harboring him in Elisa’s bathtub, but now Strickland is pursuing them and his passion for self-greatness is rising to the level of madness.
It is eventually revealed that this creature has healing powers when it touches the top of Giles’ head, allowing his hair to grow back, and healing a wound on his arm. Suddenly, the legends that indigenous peoples worshiped this thing as a god are making more and more sense. This creature comes to this universe of loneliness to free some from their bondage to isolation and to heal their wounds. (I can’t help but see a definite atonement analogy in the fact that all of these characters are lonely, but the creature chooses to give companionship to one of them.)
Things finally come to a head when Strickland confronts them, just before Elisa and Giles are able to release the creature into the ocean. He shoots and kills Elisa and the creature. The creature rises soon after and kills Strickland just as he realizes the mistake he’s made, and says, “maybe you are a god.” The creature dives into the ocean with Elisa and heals her bullet wound, then touches her childhood scars around her throat and transforms them into gills, allowing her to breathe under water and presumably live happily-ever-after with the creature she loves.
In the analysis of this worldview, the healer comes to rid the curse from the one he loves, he’s murdered in ignorance by a man who realizes his mistake once it’s too late, but rises from the dead, and not only gives life to the one he loves, but simultaneously changes her nature so that she can dwell with him, and he can dwell with her.
That’s a nice story, but reality is an even greater story. Jesus doesn’t just come to give us companionship and free us from loneliness, but comes to free us from our sin, our offense against a holy God, the cause of our ultimate loneliness—which is lack of fellowship with our Creator, and changes our nature so we can dwell with Him. The Shape of Water is on the verge of discovering something great with its gospel story, but it stops short and ultimately unfulfilled (like many of the characters.) The Gospel is not just the good news of romance or companionship, but the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.