We recently watched Shape of Water, widely tipped to walk away with the best film Oscar this year and it is strangely like a parallel reality to Hidden Figures, which should have won the best film Oscar last year (you can review my brief review here).
In Hidden Figures (a story based on historical facts) Octavia Spencer
plays brilliant mathematician Dorothy Vaughn who in 1961 was a vital
part of the team behind putting the first US astronaut in space.
In
Shape of Water (very definitely not based on historical fact), set around 1962, Octavia Spencer plays Zelda a cleaner
who along with her colleague Elisa (Sally Hawkins) becomes aware of a
strange water creature in the top secret government facility where they
work. NASA are interested in how this creature could help their
research in the space race.
To make this feeling of parallel realities even stronger, the sets of the research centres in the two films are very similar.
So
I got to imagining Dorothy Vaughn dreaming of finding a sea monster
while working as a cleaner or is Zelda dreaming of being a top class
mathematician? Anyway these musings added another layer of enjoyment to
what is already an excellent film.
Shape of Water is showing at Edinburgh Filmhouse until 15 March.
These two films would make a brilliant double bill.......
1 comment:
I just looked at the reviews of both movies. You are right, they would be a good double bill.
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