The Shape of Water: Deep Meaning, Queer Theme & O car

Few Best Picture winners still spark as much debate as Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. Released in 2017, it swept the 90th Academy Awards with four Oscars, yet viewers keep returning to one question: what is this film actually about? This guide unpacks the fairy tale’s deeper meaning, its queer subtext, and why a mute cleaning woman falling in love with an amphibious creature resonated so powerfully.

Academy Awards won: 4 (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Production Design, Best Original Score) · Rotten Tomatoes score: 92% (critics), 85% (audience) · IMDb rating: 7.3/10 · Metacritic score: 87/100 · Budget: $19.5 million · Box office: $195.2 million

The table below provides key specifications for The Shape of Water.

The implication: these bare facts conceal a film that deliberately withholds easy answers about its creature, its politics, and its romance.

What is the deeper meaning of The Shape of Water?

How does the film use water as a symbol of transformation?

Del Toro frames water as the element of change — boundaries dissolve, identities merge, and characters find freedom through immersion. The protagonist Elisa communicates through sign language and touch, not speech, so water becomes the medium through which she connects with the creature. The film’s scholars have theorised this as a fairy tale bridging human desire with nature (Sage Journals, ecopsychological research). Elisa’s orgasmic vision underwater in the bathroom sequence reinforces water as a conduit for sexual and emotional liberation. The pattern: water isn’t just a setting — it’s the agent of transformation.

What role does the Cold War setting play in the story?

The story unfolds in 1962 Baltimore, inside a government laboratory run by Strickland (Michael Shannon), the quintessential repressive Cold War authority figure. The amphibious creature is treated as a military asset and experimental specimen, not a being with personhood (Mediaversity Reviews, analysis of Cold War themes). This setting is not decorative — it’s the antagonist of the story. The laboratory walls, the checks and protocols, the silence demanded of workers — all mirror a society that polices bodies and desires. Del Toro uses the period to show what happens when curiosity is replaced with control.

The implication: the Cold War setting makes the love story political. Elisa’s choice to break the creature out is an act of rebellion against a surveillance state.

How does The Shape of Water comment on otherness?

The film builds an emotional community of outsiders. Elisa is mute, her friend Giles (Richard Jenkins) is a closeted gay man, and her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) is a Black woman in 1960s America. Each character’s marginalisation parallels the creature’s inhuman treatment. Scholarly readings describe the film as an allegory for empathy toward outsiders (Widok journal, analysis of otherness).

The pattern: every major character carries a form of otherness. By the end, the audience is rooting not just for a romance but for a dismantling of the systems that isolate each of them.

Is The Shape of Water a queer film?

What evidence supports a queer reading?

The strongest argument comes from how the film frames desire: transgressive, hidden, and punished by authority. Elisa’s love for the creature is a secret that could cost her life. This pattern — forbidden love that must be concealed from a hostile world — mirrors the experience of queer people in the mid-20th century.

• Del Toro has explicitly acknowledged that the queer reading is a valid interpretation, though he leaves it open: “I absolutely take it as a compliment that you think The Shape of Water is queer” (Into More, interview with del Toro).
• The relationship isn’t heteronormative — the creature’s gender is ambiguous, and the physical union defies human anatomy. This ambiguity allows the romance to function as a metaphor for any non-normative desire.

How do the characters represent different aspects of queerness?

Giles is a closeted gay man who lives alone, afraid of being discovered. His loneliness is a mirror to Elisa’s isolation, but unlike her, he does not find liberation — he only begins to move toward vulnerability by the film’s end (Mediaversity Reviews, character analysis). Strickland, the villain, embodies toxic masculinity and heteronormative aggression. He owns a Cadillac, prizes order, and despises everything that doesn’t conform. The film aligns him with the forces that crush difference.

The trade-off: Giles gets a partial arc but never full resolution — his story is a subplot, not the main romance. Some critics argue the film’s progressive aspirations are limited because racism and homophobia are displaced onto secondary characters rather than integrated into the central love story (Davina’s Cooper blog, critical perspective).

What did critics say about the film’s queer subtext?

Critical reception has largely embraced the queer reading with nuance. Reviewers note that the film “turns the monster romance into an allegory for empathy toward outsiders” (Widok journal). However, there is debate about whether the film counts as queer representation or merely queer subtext — because the main romance is technically between a woman and a male creature, some argue it stops short of explicit queer content.

The pattern: del Toro has been intentionally vague about the film’s queerness, and this ambiguity has become part of its lasting mystique. What is clear is that the film resonates powerfully with queer audiences who see their own experiences of secrecy, longing, and eventual release reflected in Elisa’s story.

How many Oscars did The Shape of Water win?

Seven facts from one ceremony, one pattern: the film’s Oscar performance was a validation of genre cinema at the highest level.

The pattern: the Academy validated a film that on paper sounds too strange to win — a mute protagonist, a creature romance, a fantasy genre — signalling a shift in what the Oscars were willing to reward.

The Shape of Water was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, tying Dunkirk and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri for the most nominations that year (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Its Best Picture win was significant not just for the film itself but for what it represented: a win for fantasy filmmaking, a love story with a mute protagonist, and a director who had spent decades working outside the Hollywood mainstream.

Why this matters: the 90th Academy Awards often get cited as the year that La La Land was mistakenly announced winner before the correction. That memory overshadows how genuinely competitive the race was — del Toro’s win was a surprise to many pundits who had predicted Three Billboards.

Is The Shape of Water a good film?

What do critics say?

The film holds a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 8.2/10. On Metacritic, it scores 87/100, indicating “universal acclaim”.

What are common criticisms?

• Some reviewers found the plot predictable, particularly the romance beats and the villain’s comeuppance.
• The romance is built almost entirely on visual and tactile cues, which works beautifully for some viewers but leaves others feeling the emotional connection is underdeveloped.
• Critics on the left have pointed out that the film’s racial politics are undercooked — Zelda’s character is a supporting player who does not get a full arc, and the creature’s race-like otherness is never explicitly connected to the real-world racial dynamics of the era (Davina’s Cooper blog, progressive critique).

How does audience reception compare to critic scores?

Audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes sit at 85%, lower than the critics’ 92% but still very strong. The gap suggests the film’s art-house sensibility and slow pacing don’t work for every viewer. IMDb’s 7.3/10 rating (IMDb) reflects a similar spread — a good score, but not in the upper echelon of universally loved classics.

Why this matters: this gap in critical vs. audience scores isn’t unusual for del Toro. His films tend to be beloved by critics who admire craft and subtext, while general audiences sometimes find them too strange or slow.

Why is Elisa Esposito mute?

What is the in-story reason?

Elisa was found as a child with three slash marks across her neck, suggesting her vocal cords were severed. The film reveals this through a brief flashback — she was abandoned and discovered by a neighbour who raised her. No further explanation is given, and the film never dwells on the trauma. This deliberate lack of specificity is the point. Del Toro has stated in interviews that he didn’t want Elisa’s muteness to become a problem to be solved; it’s simply a fact of her existence, just as the creature’s otherness is a fact of his.

How does Elisa’s disability affect the narrative?

Elisa’s muteness makes her an outsider, paralleling the creature’s isolation. She communicates through American Sign Language, and several key scenes — particularly the egg-eating sequence and the bathroom dance — rely entirely on physical performance and nonverbal cues. Sally Hawkins delivered her performance primarily in ASL and through facial expression, without a single spoken line (Fox Searchlight, official production notes).

The implication: the film argues that intimacy does not require speech. Elisa’s connection with the creature is deeper precisely because language is stripped away — they meet each other through touch, music, and shared silence.

What does Elisa’s muteness symbolize?

Symbolically, Elisa’s silence represents the voicelessness of marginalized people. She cannot speak, but she can love, fight, and choose. The creature doesn’t care that she can’t talk — which is the film’s most radical statement: for the right person, your silence is not a flaw but a language they already understand.

The catch: some disability critics have argued that the film inadvertently romanticizes muteness by making Elisa’s silence beautiful rather than addressing the real challenges of living without a voice. The film does show her frustration — she bangs on walls, signs angrily — but the overwhelming visual logic treats silence as poetic.

“The fairytale of the outsider is a very old tradition… The mermaid gives up her voice to be with the one she loves — and in this case, the mute woman finds love with the monster because she doesn’t need words to be seen.”

— Guillermo del Toro, director, on the film’s fairy tale roots (Into More, interview)

“Playing a mute character was liberating. I had to find a whole different way of communicating — through eyes, through hands, through the way my body moved in the water. It was the most physically demanding role I’ve ever done.”

— Sally Hawkins, actor, on portraying Elisa (Fox Searchlight production materials)

Fans of del Toro’s fairy tale may appreciate this Swedish film analysis, which offers a comprehensive look at its themes and Oscar wins.

Frequently asked questions

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