“For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you,” Ruth says. The most famous passage from the Book of Ruth is when Ruth, who is a Moabite, entreats her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, to let her come to Israel with her, even after Ruth’s husband (Naomi’s son) has passed away. That movie shows up several times in The Shape of Water, playing in the background of scenes and advertised on the Orpheum’s marquee, and though it doesn’t serve as del Toro’s primary symbolism, its story lurks around the edges of his film. It is 1960, and the theater is playing The Story of Ruth, Henry Koster’s biblical epic. The camera pans down and across the theater’s marquee. The opening shots of Guillermo del Toro’s gorgeous romance-fantasy The Shape of Water show Eliza ( Sally Hawkins) going about her morning routine - boiling eggs, bathing, brushing her shoes, visiting her neighbor Giles ( Richard Jenkins) before work - in her dingy but charming apartment above the Orpheum movie theater.
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