Guest Post: Paul Asay, Movie Reviewer, Plugged In:
It’s only fitting that Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water took home an Oscar for Best Picture (and three others) at Sunday night’s Oscars.
Both a lyrical, sensual fable and a brutal immolation of Leave It to Beaver-era America, the movie is a study in inclusion and exclusion: It posits that god-like mermen are people, too, while hypocritical Christian Cadillac buyers are the real monsters.
The film feels pretty emblematic of where Hollywood stands right now—a Hollywood that has pushed through the #OscarsSoWhite and the #MeToo movements with a desire to reward new, diverse storytellers, looking toward a hoped-for future while perhaps burning the (in Hollywood’s eyes) problematic past.
