The following review is part of our coverage of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. There appears to be something bizarrely heartwarming afoot in the zeitgeist. After a summer in which the internet decided to adopt The Babadook as a queer icon and a fall in which the Pennywise from it was also adopted into the fold and subsequentlypaired off with The Babadook The Shape of Water is now poised to win hearts and minds in theaters across the world. These things might not be directly related in terms of form or function. The denizens of the internet made some caustic jokes and memes, while writer/director Guillermo del Toro made a dreamy, sweeping monster movie love story. But the genesis behind them just might be the same: when the world sometimes tells you that you're a monster, and when you love movies but can't see yourself in the heroes, you might start to find yourself identifying with the monsters. And then you might start to find yourself wanting better for them. So you create your own stories for them, and for yourself. As del Toro recently put it to Vanity Fair after The Shape of Water's successful appearances at the Venice and Telluride film festivals, monsters are evangelical creatures for me. When I was a kid, monsters made me feel that I could fit somewhere, even if it was an imaginary place where the grotesque and the abnormal were celebrated and accepted. The Mexican director, who grew up hoping that Julie Adams and the Creature from the Black Lagoon would get together in the end, sees his latest film, among other things, as a way of correcting that cinematic mistake. And correct it he does, in a way that is sweet and subtle and so much more than simple fan service or wish fulfillment. Eliza (Sally Hawkins), a mild-mannered and non-verbal young woman, lives in Cold War-era Baltimore. She spends her days watching movies and eating terrible pies with her best friend Giles (Richard Jenkins), a gay, middle-aged artist struggling to get his career back on track. She spends her nights in pleasant companionship with her coworker, Zelda (Octavia Spencer), at a top-secret U.S. facility where they're both cleaners. It's all very pleasant but unremarkable until a slimy new agent, Strickland (a typically delightful Michael Shannon), arrives with something they call The Asset (Doug Jones). The Americans want to test this new Black Lagoon-like creature. The Russians, who have embedded a morally ambiguous spy in the facilities under the name Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), want to kill it to prevent the U.S. from gaining any advantage in their scientific arms race. When Eliza develops a bond with the creature through music and boiled eggs, and learns to communicate with him through sign language, she realizes that she must save her new friend before it's too late. Her friends are hesitant at first. Giles begs off, insisting that the creature isn't even human. But Eliza pleads a solid case. 'If we do nothing,' she signs back, 'neither are we.' Soon these misfits have banded together to save The Asset. Somewhere along the lines, the affection between Eliza and the creature blossoms into something more. Filmed in aquatic hues and bathed in nostalgic mid-century style, The Shape of Water is both a love story and a love letter to monster movies, musicals, and classic cinema. Del Toro's affection for the genres and for the magic of film in general is clear in so many charming and not-so-charming touches, from the little softshoe that Eliza and Giles execute while sitting on the couch together to the artful way a smear of blood drags across the floor. But it's also clear in the way that all of these details and hallmarks from various genres weave together to pay a worthy and almost seamless tribute to all of its influences while remaining a thoroughly del Toro vision. It's strange and unsettling and thrilling and adorable and just a little bit magical, all at once. The relationship between the creature and Eliza isn't the only new tweak that del Toro brings to these traditions. He's also shifting the relationship between these genres and his film's viewers. It's no accident that the heroes in this story are a disabled woman, a black woman, and a gay man who face off against a sinister white man with a perfect nuclear family at home. Nor is it a political choice; del Toro does not assemble a team of marginalized characters to score social justice points or check off a series of boxes. He creates human characters for aesthetic purposes, and maybe even personal ones. For so long, these genres have primarily focused on, starred, and celebrated white people, abled people, and straight (or at least closeted) people. If you've always aligned yourself with the monsters and you want to change their plight on the screen, it makes perfect sense to want to include other people who have felt the same way in the process. If you're the kind of artist who looks for new stories to tell, these are the stories that have rarely, if ever, been told before. It doesn't always work, either for the characters or for the plot, where the film's storytelling turns a little sloppy toward its end. It would be more successful if Zelda didn't occasionally veer too close to sassy sidekick territory. And for as brilliant and heart-wrenching as Hawkins is as Eliza, it would have been nice if a film so explicitly about being seeing and loved for who you truly are had sought out a non-verbal actress to play the part. Whatever imperfections The Shape of Water has, though, they're minor compared to its broader impact. No love story is perfect, after all, not even the one that a film has for its audience. And that's exactly what del Toro's latest vision is. You don't have to be marginalized in some way to be swept up in its beauty and romance. But if you happen to have had a long-term unrequited relationship with the cinema, there's a certain joyful rush that comes from having the object of your affections finally turn around and notice that you've been there all along. Trailer:
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Charlotte Gainsbourg has announced her first album in seven years. The followup to 2010's Beck-produced IRM, Rest will be released November 19 via Because Music. Accompanying this announcement, Gainsbourg has also shared a teaser for the album's title track, which was produced by Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk. The album's star-studded cast will
Find someone who skates through life with no issues, and chances are the person you're talking to doesn't live on Earth. For some, the way to move onwards is by experiencing as much as possible with your head tilted towards the sunlight. For others, simply getting through another day is a feat. When Nika Roza Danilova found herself submerged beneath new layers of depression and darkness, the musician behind Zola Jesus decided to modify her outlook - and while a perspective change can't fix everything, it was the start of something larger. On Okovi, Danilova's sixth album as Zola Jesus, she found that in order to fight off her own demons, she had to aid others in their own battle as well. A close friend attempted suicide. Another was diagnosed with cancer. Instead of questioning death in response to both events, like looking at what death means or what the afterlife entails, she examines how we, as individuals, are bound to unique burdens and spend years trying to move with them tied to our ankles. Okovi, which itself is a Slavic word for shackles, is an album of intricate reflections, moody instrumentals, and the beginning of inner peace. Over a decade into her career, Danilova finally finds a way to holster her music as Zola Jesus to find herself in a struggle to simply live. The first step to breaking down her depression was removing herself from a negative physical space. Danilova ditched Seattle and moved back to her rural, isolated hometown in Wisconsin to build a house in its woods, an imperative decision to improve her own mental health and well-being. It was there that she completed the second step: writing the crux of Okoviand, along with it, the self-reflective steps of confronting shackles and the various movements that can help unlock them. Naturally, Okovi submerges itself in a spacious type of darkness. The music mirrors her questions, channeling the eerie production of artists like Portishead, Imogen Heap, and Grouper. But while the hushed reverb of Doma or anthemic, slow-burning groove of Soak touch upon those sounds, Danilova isn't trying to sound like those artists. The opera-trained singer creates her own path, synthesizing her past work with noise, electronica, classical music, and more into a hybrid that's entirely her own. On Veka, she deepens her sound with tubular gong-like sounds, giving the illusion of a bell being hit gently, while background vocal wails and reversed spoken words sound like delusional pleas that snaked out of an insane asylum. Elsewhere, she gives way to other musicians, bringing in friends to turn her ruminations on Ash to Bone and Witness into effecting, minimalist classic works with cello, violins, and double bass. The most hard-hitting sound of Zola Jesus' evolution on Okovi is the blown-out electronic production of Exhumed. A menacing breakdown scatters its emotions with thundering drum percussion and terse strings. The instrumentals nod to '90s goth rock - which could come across like the melodramatic lurches of Evanescence - but sound full and dramatic, veering towards the jagged coolness of Bjrk's Vulnicura instead. Happiness isn't an eternal state. It's not even something that can be achieved in full. It's a process, and on Okovi, Danilova not only comes to terms with that, but she offers her own slices of joy. Wiseblood stirs through calming tones as she questions why we are undergoing tough situations that seemingly fail to benefit us, as if coming to terms with that being a staple of life. Then there's Remains, an unexpected contender for the goth dance anthem of the year. While she's busy questioning the positive outcome of struggles (Do ruins give power/ Or do they give proof/ That something meant more/ Than what we lived through?), a major-chord piano part repeats itself beneath relentless electronic drumming. It's a catharsis in the making for listeners to sweat their worries out to on the dance floor. By nature of confronting so much gloom Okovi can weigh heavily on listeners, but the brighter numbers mixed in make it easier to soak up. The same could be said of life at large. Perhaps that is to be expected when the album's artwork - a thick, black sludge coats Danilova's head, her eyes gazing out at the viewer - presents Zola Jesus as an artist who's found her calm amidst a world of undecipherable iniquity. Okovi isn't the album where Danilova finds happiness, but it is the album where she learns to make peace with life as a double-edged sword. It's why she bookends Okovi with the purification of returning home in Doma and the gorgeous, cinematic, orchestral strings of Half Life. The latter is a word-less reflection where she uses her voice and newfound understanding to accept life as is, summing up all that came before it. Sometimes in order to carry on through life, you need to accept that everyone needs help eventually. Thankfully, she did. Zola Jesus reaches a profoundly synthesized musical point and lyrical arch on Okovi that leaves you breathless come the end. Once there, she extends a hand, urging you to carry on through life to see what else it can offer because she's curious to see, too. Essential Tracks: Exhumed, Siphon, and Half Life The result is so much darker than their last album. More complex and there seems to be a more cohesive 'band' sound to them this time around.
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Maureen Lave
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