Amphibious Magical Realism? The Shape of Water as Cinematic Trauma Narrative

©2022 by the board of trustees of the university of illinois guillermo del toro is one of the leading directors of our time. His most renowned film to date is The Shape of Water (2017), which won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score. I would like to explore the reasons for the film’s success by first assessing the suitability of a term that has been used in connection with its style—magic or magical realism—and then homing in on the film’s central character, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaning woman in the fictional Occam Aerospace Research Center in Baltimore in 1962. Because Elisa Esposito moves from a position of silent victimization to one of agency, her development can be illuminated through an analogy to Bertha Pappenheim, the first patient of psychoanalysis. Better known by her clinical case name in Freud and Josef Breuer’s Studies on Hysteria (1895), Anna O., Pappenheim was treated by Breuer for hysteria but later became an activist for women’s rights. I will use her transformation from hysteric to activist as a lens through which to view Elisa Esposito’s evolution from underdog to savior. For those not familiar with The Shape of Water, I will give a brief summary. The film is a contemporary rendering of the story of Beauty and the Beast and was inspired by Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which del Toro first saw as a child. Elisa Esposito falls in love with a magical amphibious creature (Doug Jones) who has been captured for use in the space race against the Russians; the secret government laboratory in the Occam Center intends to employ the creature (referred to by those in the laboratory as “the asset”) to determine conditions that can be withstood during space flight. But Elisa is thwarted by a government agent in the laboratory, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), who wishes to vivisect the creature rather than test on it alive. Elisa elicits support from her gay neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), a commercial illustrator, and her black coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who help her rescue the creature from the laboratory and take it to her apartment, where Elisa and the creature experience a period of amorous happiness. Matters are complicated by the fact that the Russians are also interested in the creature. A Soviet secret agent, Dimitri Mosenkov (Michael Stuhlbarg), has infiltrated the laboratory as a marine biologist named Dr. Robert Hoffstetler, and resisting the orders he receives to kill the creature and Strickland’s plans to vivisect him, he instead helps Elisa save the creature. In the end Strickland shoots Elisa and the creature, but the creature is magically restored and slashes Strickland’s throat. The creature plunges with Elisa into the canal, embracing her as she comes back to life and as the scars on her neck are transformed into gills. In contrast to Creature from the Black Lagoon, in which the amphibious monster is killed after he abducts a female member of the expedition Amphibious Magical Realism? The Shape of Water as Cinematic Trauma Narrative