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The biggest theme that I picked up on in The Shape of Water, was actually not water, but
rather, time.
Right off from the opening scene, we are bombarded with symbols related to time.
Elisa's life is constantly on a tight schedule, she keeps an alarm clock and a watch on the
table next to her bed, just two of the many clocks seen around her apartment.
She's always on top of keeping track of the date using her calendar.
The calendar also features quotes on the back of each page, one of which compares the flow
of a river to the flow of time.
But despite all this, she is constantly late.
Whenever she shows up to work, her co-worker Zelda always has to rush her and pull her
up to the front of the timestamp line so she can clock in on time.
The timestamps, by the way, are another time reference, because being on time seems to
be a huge deal at the company that they work at.
There's a huge clock on the outside of the building and Director Guillermo Del Toro really
wants his audience to notice the time motif.
But the question is: what does it mean?
One of the timers that Elisa has in her apartment is a kitchen timer which is shaped like an
egg.
Eggs may have a greater significance than just being the food that Elisa feeds Amphibian
Man.
They don't really give him a name in the movie, so I'm just gonna call him…
Gabe…
Gapien.
But if you look at it in a broader, more symbolic sense in terms of their relationship; Elisa
offers her Eggs to Gabe, which could be seen as a symbol of reproductive fertility, especially
given the weird stuff that goes down later in the movie.
Which takes us back to Elisa's egg timer because human fertility is on a rather strict
timer as well, which Elisa, who looks to be in her 40s is coming up on.
And like Dimitri's timer, the one he attaches to the building's circuit panel, once time
is up, it's lights out.
Although, that could just be a reference to death.
We do see the first kill take place in that scene as a result.
There's also a scene where Elisa is waiting for the bus and sits next to a man holding
a birthday cake, a symbol for aging.
Then Giles during the part where he's feeling rejected and unwanted, he says he feels he
was born too early or too late, which is most likely a response to him being kicked out
of his favorite pie place because of his sexual orientation.
He wishes he lived in an era where he could be accepted for who he is.
That also plays a part in the reason he helps Elisa, because he can relate to her in the
sense that most of the world doesn't understand him.
That's not to say that Giles didn't need some convincing and a slap in the face to
get him going though.
Did anyone notice Elisa checking her watch before hitting him?
This could be her trying to break out her shell.
She is usually quiet, reserved… and as I mentioned, always late.
But in order to save Gabe, she knows she has to change to challenge authority and be spot
on time in order for the heist to work.
We know this because they have to synchronize their watches and there's a four minute
window to success.
Elisa still does end up being late during the heist, but she gets lucky when Dimitri
ends up being on their side.
When Elisa develops her next plan, to release Gabe on October 10th, she is once again faced
with the time challenge.
Dimitri tells her she needs to release him by then as a health concern, Strickland is
given until then to bring back the asset with his life on the line, so he bears after the
fishnapper, leaving Elisa no time to spare anyway.
It is only then that she finally makes it to the docks on time and gets herself and
Gabe to safety, presumably also beating the biological clock as she takes a dive with
Gabe, this movie's so weird…
The use of color also seems to tie into the time theme that Del Toro has woven into the
story.
This is explained when Giles presents his artwork to the Jello company and they tell
him that they don't want red jello anymore because green is the color of the future,
which led me to assume that red represented the past.
We also see some yellows in this movie, so maybe they represent the present, you can
let me know your own ideas in the comments.
I think one of the reasons I can get behind the idea, is because we see Strickland's
transition to becoming what the Cadillac dealer refers to as a man of the future.
When we first see Strickland's family, they are all wearing yellow and everything in the
house is yellow, but he really wants to get ahead of the curve in order to impress the
company he works for, where literally everything is green or teal, they are interchangeable
here.
He buys the teal car, and as he's driving home, he passes a group of people in another
Cadillac.
They are all wearing yellow.
This is the visual metaphor of him pulling out of the past into the future.
We know he's always craving green, since we see him carry around those green candies
he enjoys so much.
We know he's unsatisfied with his yellow wife and goes after Elisa, a green who is
much more innovative and forward thinking.
After he gets the car we start to see his family transition to green, at least in their
wardrobe, but his wife stays the same.
Elisa on the other hand may be painted as one of the most future oriented characters
because she is almost always seen in green and wears a large emerald throughout the movie.
The only time we see her regress to red is when she loses confidence and she's seen
crying in the locker room.
I also noticed that in Strickland's office there are three phones, red, black and green.
I'd have to see the movie again to remember who called on which phone, but I'm willing
to bet it plays into the color trends I've been pointing to.
Giles is also another example I can use.
He's going after the job to draw that Jello advertisement as I mentioned, and while doing
so he has cravings for Key Lime Pie, which is teal.
After getting rejected, he's feeling down, and reverts to ordering a red pie, it looked
like maybe cherry.
But when it comes to the heist, he knows he has to step up his game, and as he mentioned,
be brave like Elisa, so he wears green for that.
I could probably go on and on, because every shot in the movie is coded with these colors,
so let me know what you noticed in the comments.
It's mentioned that green and teal are perceived very similarly.
I would maybe call some of those shades, like the soap in the bathroom for example, more
of an aquamarine, because believe me.
I know that color.
I KNOW that color.
I KNOW.
THAT.
COLOR.
I think aquamarine is an appropriate color choice for such an aqua heavy movie.
Outside of the obvious, flood bursting out the bathroom door stuff, there were some interesting
and poetic uses uses of water in the movie, such as Strickland intentionally spilling
his glass of water to get to Elisa to come clean it up.
In doing so, he takes advantage of Elisa's love for the aquatic to try to seduce her.
As we know, it doesn't work, and Stickland is made an example of by another one of Elisa's
calendar quotes: "Life is but the shipwreck of our plans."
He is much like the Greek mythological figure, Tantalus, who Giles references earlier in
the movie.
He was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit
ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.
When Dimitri first meets the Russian spies at that one restaurant, they order Surf and
Turf.
This continues the trend of characters ordering the very thing they are going after.
The Russians want control over an amphibious creature, meaning he can get around underwater,
or on land.
Surf or turf.
The water may also foreshadow the connection shared by Elisa and Gabe.
We see early on that she loves the idea of being underwater.
This could have something to do with the fact that she's mute and you can only communicate
in sign under the surface.
But she dreams of living underwater before she ever meets Gabe.
And early on she's seen masturbating in the tub, which is the same place that she
ends up hiding Gabe, so that could allude to their sexual relationship.
And then the bathroom is the first place that they… well you get the picture.
And then finally we have the last quote of the film delivered by Giles.
"Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me."
He's talking about water, which as I mentioned in my last video, has no set molecular structure,
no shape; but when submerged, the subject is completely surrounded by it.
The story of the silent princess comes full circle, beginning and ending with her fully
submerged in water.
In both the opening and ending scenes, we see the next major motif, shoes.
One of Elisa's shoes can be seen floating in a closet in the opening dream sequence,
and when she joins Gabe in the ocean at the end of the journey the shoe is seen slipping
off her foot.
It's almost as if she's been dreaming about a fish person coming into her life and
sweeping her off her feet all along, but that's really weird to think about.
In the last video we talked about the idea of shoes representing her life on land and
her not needing them in ocean.
So the shoe slipping off her foot could represent her giving up her life on land.
I'm going to take that theory one step further, pun intended, and say that Elisa's shoes
represent her way of artistic expression and communication, and while living underwater,
no longer needs them.
Early on we see her cleaning the shoes to give that crisp tap sound, so when she's
prancing down the hall or tap dancing with Giles in front of the TV she expresses herself
rhythmically, or musically.
She's obviously interested in music and singing, as evidenced by her whistling and
the part where she actually speaks and imagines herself singing on a stage with Gabe.
We also see her literally using that tapping sound to communicate, like when she taps the
wall to get Giles attention or when Zelda asks her to tap the phone so she knows Elisa
is listening.
Whoa, hold up a second.
Time out.
How weird is it that I've been using this Legend of Zelda clip to demonstrate the extended
lifespan of amphibious fish people, and it turns out there's a character in this movie
named Zelda.
And on top of that, one of the characters in the movie is referred to as a princess.
AND on top of that, we have a silent protagonist who wears green!
Just wanted to point that out.
If you know what I'm talking about, leave a like on this video.
But anyways, back on topic here, Zelda complains when her feet are killing her while they are
working.
So if shoes are the thing that grounds you to the land on the surface and Elisa is ditching
them to be with her soulmate underwater, then Zelda's shoes must represent her marriage
to her husband, which we later find out is not a good situation.
Maybe I'm looking too far into that, I don't know.
I'm sure I'll hear it from you guys if I am.
Much of the movie has Gabe locked up, with Elisa and Zelda trying to get him to freedom.
Both characters have symbols of flying free on them.
Zelda has this bird pin that she wears during the breakout scene and there are also some
similar birds on the wall in her home.
Elisa has a butterfly jewel on her collar.
They had this wardrobe display setup at my theater, so here's better look.
Take this with a grain of salt, but Strickland tells Elisa he thinks he can make her squack,
which is possibly another bird reference?
In any event, we can infer that Strickland has no game… whatsoever.
Gabe on the other hand....
You know what?
That will probably never seem normal to me.
No matter how many times I see this movie.
One other thing that stood out to me was what appeared to be an Egyptian hieroglyphics design
on Giles's couch.
The ancient Egyptians are known for building the Sphinx and actually worshipping cats as
Gods.
You'll notice that Giles has over a million cats running around.
He has so many that it's not even that big of a deal when Gabe bites one of their heads
off.
That cat by the way, was named Pandora, which is another reference to Greek mythology.
According to Strickland, Gabe had been worshipped by the Amazonians as a God as well, before
he was captured in a river in South America.
And for those of you who are going to ask, yes, I do still think it's possible that
Gabe is unofficially the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The information we got in the movie only furthers the notion, and when Gabe carries Elisa into
the water just before the credits rolled, I immediately got a flashback to the way the
the Creature picks up Kay and carries her in Creature from the Black Lagoon.
It almost had to be a nod from Del Toro.
But my point is that the Amazonians worshipped Gabe as divinity, and by the end of the movie,
he makes a case that he really is a God by healing some injuries John Coffee style, giving
Elisa the power to control water and possibly causing it to rain so that the canal would
fill up in time for the floodgates to open.
He's also captivated at the movie theater watching "The Story of Ruth", which I
haven't seen but apparently involves the worship of Gods and idols.
Did anyone catch that movie theater was supposedly "scientifically air conditioned?"
What does that even mean?
Anyways, let's see what we've got in here?
There are a couple of posters in the women's locker room at Oceam to analyse.
The first is simple a PSA by the City of Baltimore to save water.
The other says, "Loose lips might sink ships."
My first thought was the song XO, by Fall Out Boy, but given that the movie takes place
43 years before From Under the Cork Tree came out, I decided to look it up, and apparently
it was an actual piece of WWII propaganda, basically encouraging soldiers not to give
away their plan to the enemy.
I find the choice kind of ironic, considering that Elisa has no voice, due to her neck being
injured as a baby.
It's not entirely clear what happens at the end of the movie, but I got the sense
that her neck scars ended up being a blessing in disguise because Gabe turns them into gills.
It seemed to be like she was able to breath underwater at the end, but let me know how
you perceived it too.
It was also symbolic how Gabe stabs Strickland in the throat at the end, so that as Elisa
moves to a place where she doesn't need her voice, Strickland is silenced.
And if there's a meaning behind Strickland's death, I think his initial injury, where he
loses his fingers, is also significant.
He ends up losing his ring finger and his pinky finger.
The pinky represents a promise he made to his superior, General Hoyt, to protect the
asset, which he breaks.
The ring finger represents his marriage to his wife, with whom he is unfaithful.
He tries to reattach these fingers, to patch these mistakes that he has made.
But because his character is not genuine, they never mesh back in this his body and
he just ends up ripping them out again.
I just opened up the new CZsWorld merch store, there are some killer designs you're gonna
want to get your claws on, like CZsWorld and Kill, the CZsWorld Cafe and the classic logo
design.
I'm also going to give away a free merch item to one lucky contest winner.
All you have to do to enter is upload a picture of yourself with one item from the merch store
and tag @CZsWorld.
You can enter as many photos as you want with the same merch item.
Full contest rules can be found in the description.
With that, I will let you grab your camera and get to work, but first, make sure you
like this video and subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring that deathbell
for notifications and I'll see you in the next one.
Assuming we both survive.
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