Guillermo Del Toro’s new film ‘The Shape of Water’ is about ”acceptance and tolerance”.
The 53-year-old director is at the helm of the upcoming fantasy drama movie in which a mute girl named Elisa – played by Sally Hawkins – discovers an amphibious creature known as ‘The Asset’, with whom she eventually falls in love.
And the filmmaker has said that beneath its surface as a romance movie, the production serves as an ”antidote” to the political climate of the world today.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz at the premiere of the movie at the BFI Film Festival in London’s Leicester Square on Tuesday (10.10.17), Guillermo said: ”It is a film about acceptance and tolerance. We have shown the film to many audiences and it has been received with uniformed goodwill and it seems to be an antidote for all the crazy hate and fear we see in the world these days.”
Guillermo also decided to make Elisa mute in the movie because he wanted to showcase the fact that love is about ”emotion” and not words, as he believed that would show the ”real connection” between the woman and the creature.
When asked why he made Elisa mute, he said: ”Sally [Hawkins] is beautiful, magical, and powerful all in her own style. The two lead characters don’t speak because love is not about words but about emotion and identifying an essence with the other and I thought it would be more powerful if they don’t tell each other I love you and how was your day? But instead it was a real connection. The only way to talk about love would be through singing and there’s a beautiful sequence in the movie which is a musical number where she gets to sing and all these things are related and I think that everything has been planned. Took three years to write the screenplay. It was a very difficult movie to deliver.”
