LWLies 73: The Shape of Water

It’s easy to com­plain about Hollywood’s gen­er­al lack of diver­si­ty and a hard-bit­ten unwill­ing­ness to divert resources towards orig­i­nal sto­ry­telling. Fol­low­ing a ban­ner year for new, non-fran­chise, non-super­hero hits (cf Baby Dri­ver, Girls Trip, Get Out, Split, Dunkirk), maybe 2018 could be the turn­ing point where orig­i­nal dreams are accept­ed as hard cre­ative cur­ren­cy. You don’t real­ly need to tell this to Guiller­mo del Toro, as this is a well he’s be drink­ing from since the ear­ly ​’90s and his assured, grotesque debut fea­ture, Cronos.

De Toro isn’t so much a rogue dis­si­dent with­in an impen­e­tra­ble cor­po­rate struc­ture – this is the only game he plays. Even his so-called ​“fran­chise” movies – Blade II and a pair of Hell­boy films – play­ful­ly elude cat­e­gori­sa­tion. His new work as a cine-lit­er­ate love sto­ry ripped from the dog-eared pages of clas­sic Hollywood.

The Shape of Water is set in 1963 and tells of a mute clean­ing lady who hap­pens across a cap­tive mon­ster in the gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty whose floors she mops. Dark pow­ers are at work in the back­ground to sup­press this inter-species romance, and any mode of behav­iour that might be con­sid­ered sub­ver­sive. In many ways, the film is it’s own lush hymn to idio­syn­crat­ic thinking.

On the cover…

Lon­don-based artist Jen­nifer Dion­i­sio has cre­at­ed a daz­zling illus­trat­ed por­trait of Sal­ly Hawkins as The Shape of Water’s mute hero­ine Elisa. Explore more of her work at jen​nifer​dion​i​sio​.com

Art­work inside the issue…

New­ly com­mis­sioned work by Sophie Mo, Kather­ine Lam, Dani Soon, Ana Godis and typog­ra­phy by Simon Hayes

In this issue…

The Mon­ster Squad
A con­ver­sa­tion with mas­ter fab­u­list Guiller­mo del Toro. He talks The Shape of Water, Clas­sic Hol­ly­wood and his offers his def­i­n­i­tion of what a mon­ster is.

Lit­tle Voice
Sal­ly Hawkins has qui­et­ly become one of Britain’s great­est screen actors. We trace her path from Brit scene-steal­ing to hushed stardom.

Female Beasts (And Where Not to Find Them)
The icon­ic fairy tale Beau­ty and the Beast has assumed many guis­es over the last cen­tu­ry. But why is the brute always a man?

The Out­siders
A five-essay dossier explor­ing the con­cept of exist­ing out­side the pack in cin­e­ma. Includ­ing work by James Lux­ford, Thomas Hobbs, Manuela Laz­ic, Beth Web and Ele­na Lazic.

Mime Over Mat­ter
A con­ver­sa­tion with chameleon­ic actor Doug Jones about life caked under make-up. Illus­trat­ed with Guiller­mo del Toro’s orig­i­nal designs.

Threads #5
Christi­na Newland’s reg­u­lar col­umn on the inter­sec­tions between cloth­ing and film tack­les the allure of red shoes.

In the back section…

Adam Wood­ward talks to Paul Thomas Ander­son about the bit­ter­sweet real­i­ty of Daniel Day-Lewis’ retire­ment and what makes a per­fect break­fast, all in cel­e­bra­tion of their mas­ter­ful new film, Phan­tom Thread. Danai Guri­ra talks step­ping up from TV’s The Wak­ing Dead to a role Marvel’s first for­ay into afro­fu­tur­ism, Black Pan­ther. Joaquin Phoenix reveals how he choses which direc­tors he works with (and why he chose Lynne Ram­say) in con­nec­tion with the pair’s bru­tal hit­man mood piece, You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here. Gre­ta Ger­wig talks lens nerdery and Lady Bird, while Down­siz­ing direc­tor Alexan­der Payne explains why human­i­ty is doomed.

Plus… reviews of the best new films release in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2018, plus we pre­view this year’s Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val, and Matt Turn­er sends a post­card back from IDFA in Ams­ter­dam – one of Europe’s biggest and best doc­u­men­tary festivals.

LWLies 73 is on gen­er­al sale 12 Jan­u­ary. Sub­scribe today to make sure you nev­er miss anoth­er issue.