It is often called "the movie about the fish man." You know the one. Guillermo del Toro’s 2017 masterpiece, The Shape of Water, swept the Oscars, sparked a thousand memes about monster romance, and cemented itself as a modern fairy tale. But honestly, calling it a "monster movie" feels like calling Moby Dick a book about a big fish. It misses the point. The film is a sensory experience where the sound of water isn’t just background noise; it’s a character, a language, and a sanctuary.
Set against the paranoiac backdrop of 1962 Baltimore, the story follows Elisa Esposito, a mute janitor working in a high-security government lab. She discovers an amphibious creature captured from the Amazon, and an unlikely—and deeply physical—connection forms. It sounds weird. It is weird. Yet, the film works because it treats this "weirdness" with a degree of sincerity that most Hollywood blockbusters are too afraid to touch.
Why The Shape of Water Resonates Years Later
Most people remember the visuals. The deep teals. The glowing bioluminescence of the creature. But the way The Shape of Water uses sound—and the absence of it—is what actually does the heavy lifting for the emotional narrative. Elisa is silent. The creature is silent. In a world dominated by the loud, aggressive machinations of the Cold War, their silence is their greatest weapon.
Del Toro, working with sound designer Nathan Robitaille, focused heavily on the texture of breathing. The creature doesn’t just growl; it purrs, clicks, and sighs. This wasn't just foley work for the sake of it. It was a conscious choice to bridge the gap between human and "other." If you listen closely, the creature’s vocalizations were actually a mix of animal sounds and del Toro’s own breathing recorded through a snorkel. This creates an intimacy that feels almost uncomfortably close.
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The film serves as a critique of the "perfect" American era. While Michael Shannon’s character, Strickland, represents the rigid, Cadillac-driving authority of the 60s, Elisa and her friends—Zelda, a Black woman, and Giles, a closeted gay man—live on the fringes. They are the "invisible" people. The water represents a space where those societal structures dissolve. Under pressure, water takes the shape of its container, but it also has the power to break it.
The Real Inspiration Behind the "Fish Man"
There is a common misconception that this was just a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Not quite. Guillermo del Toro famously saw that film as a child and was devastated that the Creature and the leading lady didn’t end up together. He spent decades wanting to fix that "error."
- Design influence: The creature’s face was inspired by Japanese carp and the classic Hollywood look of the 50s.
- The Actor: Doug Jones, the man inside the suit, is the unsung hero of creature performance. He had to convey longing and divinity while wearing pounds of latex and being unable to see clearly.
- Color Theory: Notice how red only appears when there is life or love. Everything else is a stagnant, murky green.
The Technical Brilliance of the Sound of Water
Let's talk about the literal sound of water in the movie. Water is everywhere—in the opening dream sequence, in the boiling pots of eggs, in the rain on the bus window. The sound team used hydrophones (underwater microphones) to capture the unique resonance of movement beneath the surface. This isn't just about splashing. It’s about the low-frequency hum that suggests a world larger than our own.
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Alexandre Desplat’s score carries this further. He used twelve flutes to create a "wavy" musical texture. There is no heavy brass. No aggressive percussion. It’s light, breathy, and fluid. When Elisa floods her bathroom to be with the creature, the music swells not with tension, but with a sense of homecoming. It’s one of the most technically difficult scenes to film, involving a "dry for wet" technique where actors were hung on wires in a smoke-filled room to simulate being underwater, and then digital water was added later.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Ending
There’s a lot of debate about whether Elisa was always "like him." The scars on her neck—the ones she was told were from a childhood injury—turn into gills. Some viewers think this is a bit too convenient, a "deus ex machina" to give them a happy ending.
But if you look at the film through the lens of magical realism, it doesn't matter if she was born a fish or if the creature transformed her. The point is the return to the source. In del Toro’s universe, the physical body is just a shell. The "shape of water" is the shape of love—it has no form, it flows into everything, and it cannot be contained by the walls of a laboratory or the prejudices of a decade.
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The film is a direct middle finger to the idea of "purity." Strickland is obsessed with it—his clean house, his new car, his "perfect" family. But he is the one rotting. His fingers literally turn black and fall off. Meanwhile, the creature, which he calls an "abomination," has the power to heal. This reversal is the core of the film’s philosophy. The "monster" is the only thing that is truly holy.
Actionable Insights for Cinephiles and Creators
If you are looking to dive deeper into the world of The Shape of Water or similar storytelling, here are a few ways to appreciate the craft:
- Watch with the sound off: Seriously. Try watching the first ten minutes without audio. Notice how much information del Toro conveys through color and movement alone.
- Study the "Dry for Wet" technique: Research how the production team used high-frame-rate cameras and smoke to create the illusion of being underwater. It’s a masterclass in practical effects.
- Read the novelization: Written by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus, the book provides much more backstory on the creature’s life in the Amazon and Strickland’s descent into madness.
- Explore the "Trilogy of Monsters": View this film as a spiritual successor to The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. It completes del Toro's exploration of how "monsters" are often more human than the people who hunt them.
The legacy of the film isn't just in its trophies. It’s in the way it validated "weird" stories. It proved that you could make a high-art film about a creature from the Amazon and have it resonate with a global audience. It’s a reminder that cinema is, at its best, a sensory experience that should make us feel something—even if that something is a bit damp.
To truly appreciate the film's impact, revisit the scene where Elisa and the creature share a silent meal. No words are spoken, but the sound of the eggs cracking and the rhythmic humming of the water pipes tell you everything you need to know about their connection. That is the power of visual storytelling. It doesn't need to explain itself. It just needs to flow.
Next Steps for Exploration:
- Locate the "The Shape of Water: Creating a Fairy Tale for Troubled Times" behind-the-scenes documentary to see the prosthetic application process.
- Listen to the Alexandre Desplat soundtrack on high-quality headphones to catch the subtle flute layers mentioned earlier.
- Check out the original 1954 Creature from the Black Lagoon to see the specific tropes del Toro was subverting.