While The Shape of Water is a masterful genre pastiche—blending monster movie, classic Hollywood romance, and Hitchockian thriller — one of its most effective moves is making a strong political statement. The narrative is spun so well within the context of the Cold War that we barely even register exactly what del Toro is saying about the era in American policy, but take a moment to pick it apart, and we realize that there's a really potent political diagnosis on display.
The fact that Strickland is a military man is central to his role as the film's real monster. He finds joy in brutality and uses his love for his country as an excuse to treat anyone who he finds inferior in rank or insubordinate to his authority like total garbage. When we see Strickland torturing the creature or using his power to sexually harass Elisa, del Toro is showing us exactly what type of person he believes would be part of the Cold War military establishment. The fact that Strickland is a suburban patriarch tells us that del Toro questions the essential values of the post-World War II American status quo.
Why might del Toro be interested in this subtle political commentary? Don't forget that del Toro is a Latin American filmmaker, and that during the time period this film depicts, the U.S. government was destabilizing left governments all throughout Latin America in the name of rooting out communism and asserting the dominance of American capitalism and finance. Del Toro's home country of Mexico supported political forces that the U.S. opposed during this period, including Castro's government in Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Keep in mind that The Shape of Water is an English-language film with a dazzling cast of Hollywood regulars that riffs on the consummately Hollywood institution of the Universal monster movie. In many respects, it seems like any other Hollywood film. But in subtle ways it reflects a different view of America than most films that it otherwise resembles. We see forces of the U.S. government portrayed as essentially sadistic, while the misfits who run afoul of it are portrayed as the real heroes of the film.
And on that note, the heroes are an interesting assortment of people who were certainly excluded from, if not entirely antithetical to, that suburban status quo that Strickland represents. We have Elisa Esposito (who given her last name, is a Latina woman) teaming up with her closeted gay neighbor. They form an alliance with an undercover Soviet spy, who would have been considered the ultimate enemy of the state in the Leave it To Beaver mode of early-1960s American life, but here is one of the most thoughtful, kind-hearted characters portrayed. One of the key components of del Toro's critique is the suggestion that while America was busy deciding what type of people did and didn't qualify as true Americans, it lost sight of the individual humanity of those people.
