The Shape of Water
Rules for Movie Memory Duel:
1) Both halves of Brerin must have watched the movie together.
2) It must be at least 3 months since having seen the movie.
3) Each half is given 3 minutes to compose their honest memories of the movies.
Brad
This is a movie by Guillermo Deltoro. It’s about a janitor lady who comes into contact with a merman type creature held captive by the US government’s secret intelligence forces. She is a nice lady who is actually mute and doesn’t really talk. She notices the government people abusing the merman and trying to study him to make him into some sort of weapon. The merman just wants to be left alone. Eventually the janitor lady decides that she will free the merman so that he can go back into nature. She gets help from her trusty sidekick Octavia Spencer and an inside man who betrays the government forces. They barely succeed, at some point using a bucket or hamper of linens to hide. The leader of the intelligence agency gets mad and shoots somebody but the merman lives and swims off back to a better life.
Erin
This movie is about a hearing-impaired woman during the cold war who cleans at a government facility. She eventually finds herself face to face with a fish-humanoid creature who also cannot talk. She develops a relationship with this creature and her friend, Octavia Spencer, who also cleans, helps her keep her secret relationship intact. In the meantime, there is a government official who wants to use this creature to weaponize him against the Russians. He is very hateful and prefers women to have no voice, which is interesting because it makes you dislike Americans in favor of Russians compared to movies that came out around that time. Eventually the main character helps the creature escape and then they both jump into the water and live happily ever after.
Hindsight Analysis: This was probably about 1 year ago when we watched this. Still somewhat fresh in the brain. In hurrying to try to remember, we disagreed on mute vs deaf for the main character (it was mute), but coincidentally Octavia Spencer was the only actor name we could remember off the top our heads. We have a good outline of the plot with Erin adding some good context in the Cold War setting and personal relationship between merman and main character. Apparently, it got very intimate in hindsight.
