FILM
1756: THE SHAPE OF WATER
TRIVIA:
When "The Shape of Water" premiered at the Toronto International Film
Festival in 2017, the screening was held in the Elgin Theatre. The interior
scenes of the theater in the film were shot in the Elgin Theatre, so as the
audience was watching the film, they were seeing the same theater on screen
that they were sitting in.
Director Guillermo del Toro said
about Sally
Hawkins, "Not only was she the first choice, she was the only
choice. I wrote the movie for Sally, I wrote the movie for Michael [Shannon]...
Sally is - I wanted the character of Elisa to be beautiful, in her own way, not
in a way that is like a perfume commercial kind of way. That you could believe
that this character, this woman would be sitting next to you on the bus. But at
the same time she would have a luminosity, a beauty, almost magical,
ethereal."
Guillermo
Del Toro wrote lengthy backstories for each of the major characters, some of
them allegedly running over 40 pages long. After casting the roles, he offered
them to the actors and said they could choose to utilize or ignore the
backstories for their own character. The actors responded differently, with
Richard Jenkins saying he ignored the backstory, stating "the only thing
that matters is what happens on screen", while Michael Stuhlbarg said he
read the backstory voraciously and found it helpful in his performance.
The
creature design is heavily inspired by the film The Creature from the Black
Lagoon (1954). Michael Shannon's character even says they picked it up in a
river in South America, which is the setting of The Creature from the film.
One
day after completing her demanding underwater scenes for this film, Sally
Hawkins had to fly to London, England, to begin production on Paddington 2.
Only to find out she would have to shoot underwater scenes for that film on the
first day of filming.
The
last name of the main character Elisa Esposito is of Italian origin, and is
given to children who were abandoned or exposed.
After
seeing the trailer, Kevin Smith tweeted, "Seeing something as beautiful
as this makes me feel stupid for ever calling myself a 'Director.'"
One
of Octavia Spencer's
favorite things about the screenplay was the fact that, by letting the main
couple be mute, most of the dialogue comes from a black woman and a closeted
gay man. In real life, they would both have experienced oppression during the
1960s setting of the film.
The
poem in the film is by the Persian poet Rumi : "Unable to perceive the
shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your
love, it humbles my heart, for you are everywhere."
