How This Year's Oscar Contenders Are Tackling Trump
When introducing his new movie The Shape of Water at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, the director Guillermo del Toro was clear about the message he wanted to convey. The Shape of Water is a romantic, grown-up fairytale, where a mute woman (Sally Hawkins) working at a secret government facility in 1962 falls in love with a sea creature (Doug Jones) that’s being held there against its will. It’s a story of empathy triumphing over prejudice, one where the facility’s villainous supervisor (Michael Shannon) is largely driven by hatred of what he doesn’t understand.
“It’s super easy to sound smart when you’re a cynic,” del Toro said of the movie. “And I just thought, can we listen to The Beatles and Jesus, and sound smart when we talk about love?” Such a statement might sound trite, but it’s the bedrock of the film’s storytelling. When discussing , del Toro (who is Mexican) has been
