I Gird My Loins For the Week To Come

Because we'll be on vacation next week, this is the week before Christmas for me. Everything that needs to be purchased, wrapped, packed, mailed, or delivered must be done before Friday. My tech writing gig must be almost finished. My glass orders must ship. And my normal, full life must occur simultaneously including working out, taking the dogs to the dog park, going to ceramics class, taking a piano lesson, and dealing with home repairs (a water leak from the second floor bathroom). There are bills to be paid, new tires to acquire, prescriptions for refill, and a car to go in for service before taking it on a long drive. And there are five days. Five. I am not counting Saturday right now as it's going to be a catch-whatever's-left day. Breathe. Don't chase the squirrels. Don't go down the rabbit holes. Don't get stuck on the hamster wheel (also known as squirrel-caging). I think Dave's worried about me. But he shouldn't be, for I have list!

Tonight we saw The Shape of Water, and it was every bit as wonderful as I had hoped it would be. Too often a movie with a seemingly  beautiful, complex story in previews is rendered banal, trite or shallow as a full feature film due to poor writing, poor acting, poor direction, or a combination of the above. As with Three Billboards--my other recent favorite--everything about this movie is perfect. Del Toro is hands down my favorite director working today. One of the things I love most about his films is his intentional attention to color.

The following is from an interview he did did with the folks at Loot Crate:

"For our readers who are studying film, or are interested in filmmaking: What are the universal aspects of your craft that you feel apply to everything you do, whether it’s a period love story like this or a big, futuristic action film like Pacific Rim?

Well, the same very, very careful and minute color-coding, texture and shape coding, the same impulse… to use audio-visual language to tell the story, other than just the screenplay. [The type of] dramturgy that you can share with theater and TV, you can use to tell the very language of film, and tell the story. When we color-code we do so for content, you know? Not for looks. We assign each color in the palette a specific reason to be there.  For example, in The Shape of Water, blues and cyans are [Elisa’s] apartment, because she’s a creature of the water. Every other living space – Zelda, Giles, Strickland – all of them are color coded for daylight, in ambers, oranges, yellows. They immediately exude daylight. We use green for the future, very pointedly, even in the dialogue. And then we use red for love and cinema: Only for the theater seats, the theater door, and her clothing once they fall in love. And I could walk you through a very different use of the same colors for example in Crimson Peak: red signifies the past, the warm colors are for America, the cool colors are for the old world.

Are there films, or even artists, that have used a similar strong approach to color or light that you feel influenced you in a big way?

The moment I felt it gelled was very early on when I was a kid, I read an interview with Fellini. He said, very pointedly, “When I went from black and white to color, I wanted to make color tell the story. I wanted it to count for something.” And I thought, that’s true, and the same applies to light, color, texture, everything.  Every time you’re using an audio-visual grammar, there are directors that use it almost in a casual way, and there are those that use it in a painterly way. And when I say “painterly,” I don’t mean “pleasant.” But actually, as part of the energy of the painting. If you have a sunset by Van Gogh, and a sunset by Turner, and a sunset by a classical painter, they will be completely different, and they could be depicting the same moment. The thickness of the paint, the boldness of the stroke… the color palette they use. They are read in a way that we don’t read film, but I try to write it in that way. I try to write it in a painterly way."

Such a beautiful movie and one that I know I'll see more details in the next time I watch it. Makes me think I want to pick Crimson Peak as one of my choices for our New Year's Eve movie fest this year...