Oscars 2018: What Bollywood can learn from Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water

After having mesmerised audiences across the world at various film festivals, Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water is currently the toast of award ceremonies. At the 75th Golden Globes it was nominated in as many as seven categories and took home trophies for the best director and best original score category. At the Oscars nomination, Del Toro’s film took the l ead with 13 nominations.

For BAFTA, the film is nominated in 12 categories and the fate of the film will be known only when sealed envelopes are opened on 18th February. However, This is all very strange considering the fact that the plot of the film is a bit far fetched and examples of such films wooing audiences, festivals and award ceremonies in equal measure is rare.

For the uninitiated, the plot of the film dates back to the era when the Cold War was at its peak. The setting is Baltimore and the Americans have successfully managed to catch a sea monster from the Amazon, who has been transported to a government lab facility for further experiments. Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer are employed in the facility as janitors and Michael Stuhlbarg is a Russian operative in the garb of an American doctor who doles out information to his Russian bosses at intervals.

The experiments are being conducted under the watchful eyes of Michael Shannon. The plot turns bizarre when Sally Hawkins falls in love with the monster and with help from Michael Stuhlbarg and Octavia Spencer manages to smuggle the monster to her home where he remains hidden from the world in the confines of her bathtub. The sole purpose is to send the monster back to waters, come the rainy season.

The most astonishing thing about The Shape of Water is that the audiences are able to decipher exactly what’s going to happen next. The twists and turns are beyond predictable and the film could at best be described as a flat and linear one. Despite everything, the film grabs your attention and you are hooked on till the end. A simple assumption as to why people have taken to The Shape of Water could also be its simplistic and a fairy tale approach. It’s also a fantasy film, the ethos of which is rooted in a love story.

The sensibility and approach of The Shape of Water is very similar to what Bollywood churns out by the dozens every year, however none are able to create ripples at any corner of the world, forget festivals or award ceremonies.

Bollywood flicks are infamous for creating fairy tales and larger than life stories, far removed from the daily drudgery of life. The Shape of Water in such a context should become a Bible for Bollywood filmmakers, giving us hope of wooing cinegoers across the world.

It’s commercial flicks that make the Bollywood machinery run, but it’s always the off-commercial genre that is representated at international forums. Despite entertainers being Bollywood’s core forte, it’s always a film like Masaan, Court, Qila or The Lunchbox that represent the Indian film industry at festivals across the globe. In the same breath, films like Om Shanti Om, Sultan, Robot or Tiger Zinda Hai, no matter how many zeroes they might add to their collection, simply fail to make it to the cut.

There’s a lot that Bollywood can learn from The Shape of Water. Let’s analyse the core features of the film first. It has a story with the backdrop of the Cold War. The female protagonist is shown as a strong woman despite being mute. To top it all there is a lovable neighbor who personifies all that’s good with the world. In a universe that existed in ’60s America, this looks very plausible. Contrast this with what we’ve been churning out (read blockbusters) – and you will find many similarities. Mostly they are centered on a formula, revenge or a love story. They have their own universe, which in most cases are far removed from reality. The effort is only to provide entertainment for few hours.

Few films that enjoyed immense success in recent time and had a fictitious plot based on real incidents are Airlift, Toilet Ek Prem Katha and Tiger Zinda Hai. The Akshay Kumar starrer Airlift was based on the plight of Indians trapped in Kuwait during the Gulf War while Tiger Zinda Hai had its story woven around the true episode of 40 nurses who were abducted by ISIS. These films could just be the beginning. Creating a make believe world has been Bollywood’s forte for years and this skill set only needs to be chiseled and honed further.

The need of the hour for Hindi cinema is to contemporise its fairy tale story line - like Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water. Adapt the fairy tale to contemporary situations and make entertaining, engaging cinema. Then Cannes, Telluride or Toronto won’t look so far, and mainstream Indian films too could cross over to international film theatres.