"Do you still blog?" Graydyl had asked. My brain short-circuited for a moment. When was the last time someone had mentioned its existence to me? In fact, I'd nearly forgotten about the blog myself.
So I don't really blog much these days, as one might surmise. In predictable narrative symmetry, I've returned to journaling in a notebook, not unlike the scores of diaries I filled up as a pre-teen. I write notes about the books I've read, the films I've watched, and other pieces of interest I've observed.
Winter is a breeding ground of nostalgia. When I return home to this valley, my past is inescapable. I've been devouring Guillermo del Toro interviews since watching The Shape of Water, and there was one quote that latched onto me. "The clarity of emotion when you're 16 is the most you you will ever be. But we look at you and see a fucking kid."
The night is falling. I sit at the desk in my childhood bedroom, by the north-facing window with the clearest view of our street. As the salt lights flicker on outside, I stumble across a shoddy video of Nuno Bettencourt at a Rihanna concert on Youtube. The keyboard and the electric guitar entwine their melodies in ascension, and here I am again, on the cusp of seventeen, dreaming of roses and rock stars and unsent love letters, reduced to the purest essence of my being: melancholy.
#
Unable to perceive the shape of you
I find you all around me
Your presence fills my eyes with your love
It humbles my heart
For you are everywhere
The Shape of Water was one of those movies that I kept turning over in my mind long after I left the theater, unfolding and refolding the creases to marvel at its construction.
It could have totally gone wrong in so many different ways. But the film walks so gracefully and effortlessly on that tight-rope, that you don't notice just how far the drop could go.
The linchpin of it all: the Asset. I can't tell you how many articles I've read on how they designed the sea monster. Undeniably a creature, with blue-black banding not unlike rainforest tree frogs and the spiny fins of a perch. And yet... not only an Amazonian god, but a plausible love interest for our mute heroine. The interviews will delineate the enormous amount of thought put into the large reflective eyes, the full lips of male supermodel, Greek nose of the "Michelangelo's David of amphibian men," but what struck me as I watching the movie in theaters was the physicality of the creature in movement as it revealed itself to Elisa for the first time.
Some people criticize The Shape of Water--as they often do for del Toro's oeuvre--for its simplistic story. I have never quite taken to that perspective. Fairy tales are by nature the distilled essence of centuries of storytelling, but you may be surprised just how difficult it can be to walk that tight-rope of sweet romanticism and grim realism with a final product that is too cloying or saccharine. (Aside: I haven't seen The Greatest Showman yet, and I may very well watch it solely to witness Zac Efron and Zendaya sing a duet on a trapeze, but I suspect the film falls short in delivering the right tone.) There is darkness in The Shape of Water, but ultimately it is a story where the light triumphs. And in an era where the world feels unsalvageable, in a time when my life is immersed in daily reminders of human mortality, could you blame me for being drawn to the light?
