For months now, Guillermo Del Toroâs The Shape Of Water has been facing a number of plagiarism accusations, with the outcry gaining a bit of steam thanks to the filmâs many Academy Award nominations. Digg has put together a breakdown of the things that The Shape Of Water seems suspiciously similar to, specifically Paul Zindelâs 1969 play Let Me Hear You Whisper and a 2015 short by a Dutch student filmmaker called The Space Between Us. The latter has mostly been dismissed as a coincidence, with the shortâs producers talking to Del Toro and determining that there was no way he couldâve lifted any ideas from The Space Between Us.
The similarities to Let Me Hear You Whisper seem a bit harder to ignore, though. For starters, Del Toroâs movie is about a mute woman working as a custodian at a laboratory where the government is conducting mysterious experiments. Zindelâs play is about the same thing, though the woman is simply very introverted instead of mute. Del Toroâs movie has the woman develop a relationship with a fish man who is being experimented on, and Zindelâs play has the woman develop a relationship with a dolphin that is being experimented on. Eventually, both women attempt to free the captured aquatic creature.
Zindelâs son told The Guardian he was âshockedâ at how similar the movie was to his fatherâs play, but Fox Searchlightâthe studio behind The Shape Of Waterâmaintains that Del Toro didnât know anything about Let Me Hear You Whisper, telling Vanity Fair that he âhas never read nor seen Mr. Zindelâs play in any form.â Also, as io9 notes, part of the idea for The Shape Of Water was supposedly invented by Daniel Krausâco-author of the Shape Of Water novel alongside Del Toroâwhen he was a teenager.
Barring one side giving in, it seems like this controversy isnât going to go away any time soon. No matter what happens, though, at least thereâs a lot of content available these days about silent women falling in love with sea life. Surely thatâs a genre that someone out there is super into.
