podcast audio second draft

A group of friends discuss their thoughts on Guillermo del Toro's film, "The Shape of Water." Some loved it for its romantic ending, while others found it bland. They discuss the inspiration for the film, which came from "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" and a short film called "The Space Between Us." The setting in 1962 during the Cold War is seen as a way to highlight discrimination and dehumanization. They also discuss the casting choices and how Del Toro specifically wrote the movie for certain actors. Overall, they have mixed opinions on the film. All right, so we just watched Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. So what did everyone think just to start us off? I really loved this movie. I think it has one of the most romantic endings. I also really liked the movie. I did think, like, coming at it from, like, kind of a romance aspect was interesting, but I did actually enjoy that part of it as well. You know, personally, I'm not that huge a fan of the movie. I thought it was just kind of bland, but with a, like, fish aesthetic to it the whole time. Yeah, I also really liked it. I think it went against Dominic's opinion there. I wouldn't say it was one of my favorite Guillermo del Toro's, having never seen it before, and, like, not having thought it was going to be very good going into it, I thought it was pretty enjoyable. The idea of it being sort of a romance leads into our inspiration topic. So Guillermo del Toro actually got a big part of his inspiration for this film from The Creatures in the Black Lagoon, in which he saw Jimmy Adams as a creature, and the whole movie, apparently, he was rooting for them to fall in love. It was very much intended to be, like, a romantic spin off of The Creatures in the Black Lagoon. I think, like, when you approach it and, like, have that background knowing it, like, it allows you to have a better understanding, too, and it's, like, you can pick up on a lot more and, like, tell the inspiration as well. Yeah, there's actually a quote that Guillermo del Toro said in an interview where he said, I've had this movie in my head since I was six, not as a story but as an idea. When I saw The Creatures swimming under Julie Adams, I thought three things. I thought, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought, this is the most poetic thing I'll ever see. I was overwhelmed by the beauty, and the third thing I thought is, I hope they end up together. So, yeah, he actually, like I was kind of saying, pitched this idea to Universal as a spin off of Creatures in the Black Lagoon, but Universal was like, no way, that's too crazy. And he ended up just doing a totally new movie that was just very heavily inspired by that. Yeah, it felt like they didn't really justify her just having sex with the fish man that well. He's eating cats and a bunch of stuff. He doesn't really feel like there's any real signs that he is a human intellectually. We just see him copying. It could be anything, like a bird copies human speech. No one thinks that means it's a human. Yeah, I think the ability to understand the ASL sign language was kind of hinting that he had this higher level of intelligence because most animals don't have complex language patterns. But to your point, eating the cat was really strange because it was almost like they were saying, oh yeah, this is a wild animal. He's really not human. Yeah, they hint at him being human-ish, but I feel like they need to emphasize it a bit more because it just kind of feels a bit odd that she just goes straight to having sex with it. I know she wasn't present for the conversation, but I do remember the one scientist is like, he's capable of intelligent conversation or whatever. And that stuck out to me because even though Eliza wasn't there for that conversation, they do kind of tell you if in some way he is capable. So even if she doesn't know that, the audience kind of knows that, I feel like. I think she also does know it in the sense that she's teaching him sign language and she sees him communicating with her. So in that way, she has a personal understanding, not as much of a scientific understanding as that. Yeah, I felt like it just could have used a scene or two more to just establish it a bit better. Yeah, I could see that. All right, going on to the other film that inspired Del Toro in this, it was the 2015 short, The Space Between Us, which according to IMDb, I haven't seen the short, I don't know if anyone has. So IMDb says, in a post-nuclear oxygen-ridden future, humble singer Juliet has her loyalty tested when she falls for Adam, a captive merman whose skills are mankind's last hope for survival. So even without seeing the film, I can kind of see the connection there of like, woman falls in love with merman, woman falls in love with fish man. So next up, we wanted to talk a bit about the plot and setting of this film. So it was set in 1962 during the Cold War. What effect did you guys think of this had on the overall film? I feel like it helped the audience, especially like with all of the different discrimination and everything everyone's facing. I feel like it helps contextualize that more and it makes it easier for the audience to swallow because it's like, when we think about the 60s, we think about a lot of the discrimination and that kind of stuff, as opposed to setting it in modern day, where people might be more likely to argue that like, oh, well this wouldn't happen. I mean, the likelihood of a fish man existing is pretty low, but aside from that. There's a really great quote that I also pulled for this section. Well, it was by Gary Del Toro, but I pulled it from an article from Minnesota Daily by Haley Bennett, where Del Toro says, I think what he's trying to say here is that a lot of people think that 1962 is like a time in the far past, so he can talk about issues that are still really relevant today with this kind of lens of distance and this fairy tale sense because we think that's so long ago. What do you guys think about whether that's what he meant? Because I think it's kind of open to interpretation. I agree with that interpretation. Like I was saying, I kind of understand that and that's how I took it as well. Yeah, I feel like with the whole 60s aesthetic and everything, a lot of the problems are still here today, but it feels really emphasized. The setting, just because everything's so like more fancy and high-polished looking that has like an outward appearance of being civilized that hides its like true darkness within. Yeah, we definitely see, like you started to say, the overt discrimination in this film from pretty much all of the protagonists. We have like these characters that are on the outskirts of society, but one character's black, one's mute, one's gay, one's Russian, and then there's obviously the fish man, which at the time, these characters would kind of be outcasts in terms of general society, and you definitely see each one of these people being kind of targeted for things that are beyond their control. Yeah, fish men generally don't get the right to vote, I don't think. Yeah, that was probably assumed. So we have this theme of dehumanization of the monster and the production of a quote-unquote moral monster, so all of the characters that are really good-hearted, caring people are kind of on the outskirts of society, and to normal society are almost portrayed as monstrous, whereas the characters that are in the in-crowd of society, such as Strickland, who has a very prominent position, he has the perfect family, and people generally respect him and think highly of him, he's actually the one that's truly, truly monstrous deep down. So there's this kind of juxtaposition of those that are perceived as monstrous versus those that really are at heart. There's also a quote going off of that that I really liked, I cried a little bit at this point in the movie, when Eliza's friend is talking about how this guy's not even human, why does it matter if we save him? And she, in turn, says, if we do nothing, neither are we. So I think that really emphasizes that theme of the moral monster, if you are doing evil things, you're the monster, not the people that look a certain way. Does anyone else have thoughts on that section? I feel like in a couple of Del Toro's other movies, too, you kind of see the whole thing of humanizing the monster, but making the human the monster as well. Yeah. So I kind of liked that it's a common theme. You have him in Notes About Chronos, and that's the one I was thinking of, with Ron Perlman's character being the human, but you see all of the lengths he's willing to go to and the monstrous things he does compared to the monster. Yeah, whereas the one who was actually a vampire is kind of a good guy. Yeah. That was similar to The Devil's Backbone, where the monster is this ghost that comes the whole time, and they set it up as this crazy spirit, but then it turns out that he was just an innocent child, whereas the human who murdered him is the truly monstrous individual. I felt like Strickland didn't really work as well as a lot of the others, though, just because he doesn't come off particularly as intimidating as someone like Captain Badal. He's not as interesting as a lot of the other characters with depth, so he just feels like a sort of weird spot in the middle where he just isn't that decent. I would say she didn't have the same depth, but I still felt like he was really creepy. Yeah. He was intimidating throughout the movie. All these horrible things that you hear him say and things that he does to the fish man, to people with disabilities, to people who are black. I definitely got the sense that he was a truly horrible human being. He felt terrible, but it felt like an over-the-top comical way, sort of, whereas what happens with all this bashing a man's face in with a bottle, you just stop for a minute, like, oh, damn, this guy is evil. Yeah, I could see that, the comic portrayal of him. The next thing that we wanted to talk about was casting. We wanted to discuss a little bit about how the movie was cast. So I thought it was really interesting. In an interview, Del Toro talked about how he kind of specifically wrote the movie for Doug Jones, Hallie Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon. Originally he had someone else in mind to play Giles, but then that person wasn't available. But I think it's really interesting, like, watching it and knowing he had these people in mind from the get-go. Actually, I think with Doug Jones, like, the biggest thing is, like, he obviously played Abe Sapien in Del Toro's other movie, Hellboy. And they actually went through a lot of work to, like, distinguish the two characters from one another so that they didn't seem super similar. Yeah, that's interesting that they did stuff because, honestly, one of my first thoughts when I saw The Fishman was like, oh, my God, this looks just like Abe Sapien. I was kind of surprised that they did do so much work to distinguish them. They still look pretty similar. I think it might have been more with, like, movement and stuff. Right. I could see that for sure. Yeah. And then I think when it comes to Hallie Hawkins' casting, there's a really good quote from Guillermo Del Toro. He said, most people think actors deliver great lines and they deliver dramatic stuff, but in reality for me, an actor listens and looks. So when they listen to another actor and look at another actor, that's the most valuable resource in an actor. So I wrote it for her, speechless news, because to me, love renders you speechless. That's a really big quote. Yeah. And her acting is really good despite having no lines. Yeah. There's, like, a thing called, like, there's a lot of people who emphasize how important, like, subtle acting is and how a lot of the times it's harder to do like the over-the-top dramatic type. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard about that, especially, like, in film. Obviously, theater acting came before film, but, like, when film started, we had to make a really dramatic shift of, like, not doing these dramatic movements but doing, like, subtle things that you can't really put into film. So it's interesting that this movie definitely really highlights that by a lot of it not being all her acting. I mean, some being focused on her lines and ASLs, but also more so on her movements and her expressions. Yeah, definitely. So then another thing that we know about Kiyomoto Toro is that she loves colors, and he uses really dramatic colors in a lot of his films. So do you want to talk a little bit on what the visuals were like in this film in particular? Okay. Did you know that when Del Toro first envisioned The Shape of Water, he intended it to be a black and white film? I didn't realize that at first, actually, until you shared that research. Yeah, it's true. That's why the climax of the movie where Eliza dances with the creature was in black and white, but eventually ended up shooting it in color. Despite its initial intention, it has received widespread acclaim for its brilliant use of color. Like, green dominates the film, symbolizing depression or mainstream culture and the future. Remember the line, green is the trend? Yeah. It suggests green as the color everyone should follow, but the director's true message lies in the complementary color of green, it's red. So after the protagonist shares love with the creature, she starts wearing a red headband and red clothing for the first time. It means red symbolizes love and truth, I think. And the significance of red becomes even more emotionally resonant in the ending, but yeah. It's kind of a spoiler, so I don't say anything. And let's talk about teal, color teal. So similar to green, but specifically labeling it as teal may symbolize pure bloodism, I think. And there's another interpretation, yellow, representing wealth and power. So strategic and noteworthy use of color in this film adds such depth to its narrative, don't you think? Yeah, I think what you said about the color red was super interesting, because just seeing the cover of this film with Eliza's bright red shoes that didn't really stand out, I kind of thought that just seeing that, why did they choose to make that such a common color? I think it's really interesting that love and truth are connected to that, and you definitely see that play through. Even with, like you were saying, with her wearing red after her interaction with the fish man. All right, so then special effects were obviously very relevant in this film with the amphibian man and other aspects of the film, so maybe we could just talk on that a little bit, what we thought of it and how Del Toro actually gave this effect. Yes, so much work went into just making the amphibian man look as good as he does. They had to put a lot of effort into the way his face, the gills on his neck, move in different ways according to his emotional state, and they had to use a lot of CGI to get it exactly right. I can imagine. I think we also saw that a lot of Baltimore was digitally created, too. Do you know why that was? It was just adding a lot of stuff to fit the aesthetic of the town. At one point at the beginning of the movie, there's a fire in the back, and the whole half of the city is just digitally made, and they had to do every little detail. They said their goal in general was to make it so seamless you just didn't even notice any of that, and were mainly focused on how good the fish man looked, which I'd say they were. They did pretty good. I would honestly say I did not notice the Baltimore background that much. You need to realize that. This film, they just made it look so amazing with how much work they did. I feel like that's the main strength of Del Toro, the special effects are always just really top-notch. I would say overall, it was a very well-put-together film, from the special effects, the visuals, to his confusion between the plot and the setting. I think it was very intentionally put together. I think that's all that we really wanted to discuss today. I think that's a pretty good wrapping up point. And that's all, folks. We'll see you next week when we discuss the economics of Mozambique on our next episode, and that's all.