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Review of The Shape of Water (Alexandre Desplat)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you are an established enthusiast of Alexandre Desplat's remarkably precise methodology and consistently appreciate his sometimes quirky but affable romantic side.

Avoid it... if your brain cannot reconcile why a composer would provide a delightful, European romance score in an American fantasy environment, Desplat's usual mannerisms causing a potentially major disconnect for some listeners here.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The Shape of Water: (Alexandre Desplat) As evidenced by the most popular of classic movie poster art, the cynical and perverted movie-goers enthralled by the old monster movies of the 1950's and 1960's always wondered why the grotesque villains of such fantasy tales couldn't at least sometimes get the girl in the end. After all, don't most of these monsters simply need laid? Director Guillermo del Toro concocted a story of essentially such postulation, humanizing the monster and creating a fairy tale environment in which such a creature could win the hearts of the lead actress and audiences alike. His very highly acclaimed 2017 film, The Shape of Water, explores the possibility that the American military captured the "creature from the black lagoon" in 1962 and proceeded to poke and prod the monster until its inevitable execution for further biological study. A mute female janitor at the military facility, Elisa, teams up with friends to help the creature escape after she bonds with him, all the while eluding another layer of intrigue in the form of Soviet espionage. It's a highly romantic, touching depiction of content otherwise perfect for an "X-Files" episode, and del Toro pulls it off with the help of masterful performances and gorgeously vivid production design. The director had collaborated with numerous Hollywood A-list composers through the years, but he struck a new relationship with French master Alexandre Desplat for this topic, infusing an inevitably European sense of romanticism into the story. Desplat enjoyed a highly varied year of production in 2017, the duo of Suburbicon and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets further exposing his immensely diverse talents at stylized drama and mammoth fantasy. Certainly, his music for The Shape of Water will land best of the three with mainstream audiences and awards bodies, aided by a number of high-profile source placements. Among these borrowings is the classic song, "You'll Never Know," from the 1943 film, Hello, Frisco, Hello, re-recorded by Desplat with legendary opera singer Renee Fleming. A number of other romantically-inclined songs of the era are sourced throughout, and the album release for The Shape of Water supplies these generously at the end of the presentation.

Desplat's original music for The Shape of Water represents yet another situation in which the composer comes dangerously close to over-intellectualizing a score. There is nothing accidental about the composer's tone or instrumentation in this music, Desplat's knack for absolute precision on full display and appealing to a logical conveyance of particular emotional needs at each moment of the work. In this regard, it is brilliantly tactical while also striving to offer a sense of quirky, whimsical innocence to an otherwise potentially traumatic tale. On the other hand, Desplat completely fails to capture the magnificence of the fantasy involved, tackling the project with such overwhelming European sensibility that one cannot help but be distracted by how distinctly foreign the score often sounds, and not foreign in a productive way. The orchestral ensemble utilized is highly restrained until the score's later passages of action and overt romance, the woodwind section notably replaced by only 12 flutes ranging across that instrument's full spectrum. This was the composer's technique of addressing the concept of water, especially in the flowing, rhythmic formations often occupying those flutes. The piano actually functions better at this task of fluid movement, and it is prevalent here as well. Less impactful are glockenspiel and harp contributions. The two most obvious players in the score, however, are an accordion and Desplat's own whistling as representatives of the creature and Elisa, respectively. Unfortunately, neither of these choices makes much sense in this context, the accordion supposedly an echo of some South American origin for the creature but really only infusing a touch of French class into the equation. One has to wonder why Desplat didn't employ an inspired theremin in a romantic twist for the character. While the whistling may be a highly ironic choice of musical representation for a mute character, Elisa is heard doing just that in the film. Still, the tone of Desplat's whistling performances seems oddly disconnected with the tone of this story, a much better stylistic match for a topic like Suburbicon. These questionable instrumental choices will not bother some listeners who find the entire story so outlandish that a foreign musical tone, whether "European" or otherwise, will not matter, and the score does become more conventionally rendered in its third act. Once could definitely argue that the music's job was to lighten an otherwise dark film. But that dainty French tone may seem bizarrely misplaced to some listeners, and for good reason.

Another lingering concern about Desplat's writing for the romance genre is his aversion to conveying long, tonally simplistic lines that are emotionally accessible to a wider audience. The love theme in The Shape of Water generates more harmonic warmth in parts, and moments like the height of "Watching Ruth" cannot be discounted. There will be listeners, however, for whom this music simply will not touch in the same way that more melodramatically grandiose composers could by using saccharine extroversion. Desplat seems more content playing down his impact in the mix, understating his themes, striking subtle discord in his tonalities, and straying towards quirkiness rather than traditional ballad structures of maximized accessibility. As such, there will be a subset of listeners to The Shape of Water that find difficulty grasping the score's appeal. The brain tells you otherwise, especially in how Desplat takes Elisa's awkward waltz ("The Shape of Water" and, of course, "Elisa's Theme") and the creature's equally awkward theme ("The Creature" and "Fingers") and combines them into one, quite lovely identity that flourishes with delicate bliss in the pivotal cue, "Overflow of Love." The narrative arc of the music is solid in the thematic handling, but the instrumentation does inhibit it at times. The accordion transfers over to Elisa and the love theme, perhaps indicating the creature's affect on her, but the whistling doesn't go the other way. By the Elisa theme's performance in "A Princess Without a Voice," no evolutionary transition in the instrumentation matches what we see on screen. The music for the spy and thriller element in the story is rather limp compared to the romantic side, cues like "Spy Meeting," "Five Stars General," "He's Coming For You," and "Rainy Day" offering increasingly troubling string motifs familiar to John Barry suspense, and "The Escape" presents oddly out of place percussion layers far less applicable, despite the origins of the creature, than the straight snare rhythms of "Decency." Desplat's usual electric bass accents supply some gravity when needed, but this element exposes another troubling issue with The Shape of Water: its extremely dry and centered mix. For a fantasy film, this music is tragically flat, the spread of its instruments too condensed and lacking bass depth, and the ambience is frightfully dry. Some reverb for the watery atmosphere was definitely needed. Overall, Desplat's music will delight his ardent enthusiasts with its intelligence, but others will remain unconvinced by his questionable choices when confronted by what they may perceive as oddly disconnected precision. The score will either melt your heart or make you scratch your head.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 77:02

• 1. The Shape of Water (3:43) • 2. You'll Never Know - performed by Renee Fleming (4:38) • 3. The Creature (1:47) • 4. Elisa's Theme (2:37) • 5. Fingers (2:09) • 6. Spy Meeting (1:43) • 7. Elisa and Zelda (1:10) • 8. Five Stars General (1:32) • 9. The Silence of Love (1:35) • 10. Egg (2:14) • 11. That Isn't Good (1:44) • 12. Underwater Kiss (2:12) • 13. The Escape (10:58) • 14. Watching Ruth (2:18) • 15. Decency (2:23) • 16. He's Coming For You (1:40) • 17. Overflow of Love (2:56) • 18. Without You (2:31) • 19. Rainy Day (3:13) • 20. A Princess Without a Voice (1:50) • 21. La Javanaise - performed by Madeleine Peyroux (4:11) • 22. I Know Why (And So Do You) - performed by The Glenn Miller Orchestra (3:00) • 23. Chica Chica Boom Chic - performed by Carmen Miranda (2:19) • 24. Babalu - performed by Caterina Valente and Silvio Francesco (2:52) • 25. A Summer Place - performed by Andy Williams (2:34) • 26. You'll Never Know (Alternate Version) - performed by Renee Fleming (6:50)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes extensive credits and a note from the composer about the score.

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