Hidden Details in The Shape of Water

If you are a movie fan and pay close attention to the Oscar Awards, you might remember the movie "The Shape of Water." The movie won four Oscars. The audience widely accepted it, and critics loved it. Sure the movie was beautifully written and crafted.

If you are studying films or have a keen interest in directions and cinematography, The Shape of Water could be the best case study. So if you are looking for any such fun and fantastic piece of art, we will explore the movie in this article. Although the film has a fundamental storyline yet, it has many small nuances that you might have missed. Let’s find those hidden sparkles in the masterpiece.

The Shape of Water is an American romantic fantasy drama that was released in 2017. The film is directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by Toro and Vanessa Taylor. The cast was as amazing as the technical team, as the protagonist Sally Hawkins amazingly played her part. And the rest of the actors Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg and Octavia Spencer lend appreciable support.

The story revolves around the mute cleaner, who works at a government laboratory, Elisa.

She later falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature. It is set in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962, and shooting took place in Hamilton, Ontario, and Canada between August and November. The movie is a masterpiece with stunning visualization and a compelling story. Del Toro’s fantastic imagination made the unusual tale alive. The love story between a human and a creature is a very new idea to portrait. And the fantastically captured scenes added more sugar to it. But chances are you haven’t recognized all the details of the craft. So here we are looking into the film even deeper.

The Creature

Doug Jones played the character of the creature. And he played it very innocently and spectacularly. When we saw the creature in The Shape of Water, it instantly reminded us of the creature from Black Lagoon. Del Toro is a horror film lover, and you can say it from his movies. In the film too, Strickland, played by Michael Shannon, mentioned that he found the creature somewhere in South America, which is where the creature from the Black Lagoon is from.

Red Clothing of Elisa

Sally Hawkins beautifully portrayed the protagonist of the movie, Elisa. Initially, in the film, she is a very kind, shy, timid, child-like, reserved, and vulnerable kind of woman in her 30s. Elisa has an apartment and a job, although she was quite comfortable with herself, but not satisfied with her life. Elisa was leading a routine life. Every day she involved herself in the same activities. She has a sense of imagination and wonder. Elisa is dreaming of a different experience.

As the story unfolded, we see her opening up and alive and eventually becoming a person of action. She was ready to break the rules to feed the creature and save him; she even violates government law. She is all fiery and robust. And this evolution mirrored in her clothing. As the film proceeds, we see Elisa in more red and bright clothing, which indicates she is becoming bolder.

Green Color

If you remember, the color of the creature is green, and Del Toro played with it very well. In many instances, he used the color to create a connection with the creature. It is most notable that green color is also the color of the creature’s healing power, and he tried to tie other characters with him using the color. If you try to remember Giles’ refrigerator (played by Richard Jenkins), it is filled with green jello. Giles seeks ideas for his advertisement sketch that features the Jellos. And later, he tries to impress the worker by ordering key lime. As the story goes on, Giles helps the creature and saves him from Strickland and the police.

On the other hand, Strickland was buying a new car. He strictly opposes the green color car, saying how he hates the green color, which mirrors that he also hates the creature.

Was Elisa Human or an Amphibian?

The ending of the movie is debatable. Del Toro very smartly left the story unexplained, and hence it could have many explanations. One simpler and basic one is Elisa is dead, it is only a dream sequence or hallucination of the creature that she gets alive.

Another could be that the creature might give her the gills with his healing power, and then these two will happily live after

Or there could be another explanation that could be adopted from Elisa’s past in the story. Earlier in the film, we learn that Elisa is an orphan and found as a child on the river bank. And when people see her, she has the scars on her throat. Those might not be scars, but gills that she never used and hence remained inactive. Then in the intimate scene with the creature, Elisa is unexpectedly comfortable underwater. She was also conveniently communicating with the humanoid creature in sign language, which might indicate that the creature adapts sign languages, and Elisa might not mute, she doesn’t have a human vocal cord. In the climax scene, when she is shot and dead, the creature takes her underwater. It activates her inactive gills, allowing her to breathe underwater.

David Root is a self-professed security expert; he has been making the people aware of the security threats. His passion is to write about Cyber security, cryptography, malware, social engineering, internet and new media. He writes for Office security products at Office.com/setup.

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Hey there, I’m David. I’m a software engineer living in Houston, Texas 77018. I am a fan of web development, fashion, and homesteading. I’m also interested in education and innovation.