Another of the minor details I picked up on, adding to the film's mystique, was that Marina's feet appear to be webbed, which when added to her beauty, ability to hold her breath underwater, love of swimming and all things marine point to her being a latter-day water-nymph or mermaid. Don't know if I'm reading too much into this but I think it's deliberate on Forsyth's part. Wonder what year "Splash" was made...
shareDon't forget that Marina is the name of the mermaid in Gerry Anderson's puppet series "Stingray", a series Forsythe would have been aware of. I haven't heard an interview where he was asked whether there was a direct connection though.
shareIt couldnt be any more obvious than her name, Marina...female of the sea. I fell in love with her when she appears in the lab. Much like Danny did. Love the way he pronounces it too: Mah-rrreee-nah!
shareNear the end, where Danny tells the swimming Marina that the research centre is going to happen, she turns and swims off. I don't know if it is intentional, but I always like to think that her flippered feet are meant to be mistaken for a mermaid's tail, and that is why she doesn't come out of the sea to talk to Danny.
See also the earlier scene where Danny says that people use to think that seals were mermaids; Marina looks at him and pauses, as if she is holding to on to some secret knowledge, before saying, 'Aye. They were wrong.'
I think you're reading too much in this. As a scientist Marina is rather matter-of-fact and doesn't have any romantic feelings about seals being mermaids.
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Rome. By all means, Rome.
... or she knows seals are not mermaids because she knows exactly what mermaids are. I don't actually believe that one but part of the brilliance of the film is that there are many opportunities to form your own opinion about what it is going on. Unlike many it does not slam your head against the wall with obvious plot points, provide musical cues for your emotions or have one dimensional characters.
shareAnd (not to belabor the obvious) she also functions as one of the two--what are they? Muses? Inspirations?--for the ultimate fate of the town, as the location of an astronomical/oceanographic observatory: Stella (sky) and Marina (sea).
shareI don't know if we need to read that much into it. Some people do have webbed feet - a much more rare anomaly then detached earlobes, but nonetheless its interesting. I can leave it at that.
You just have to be resigned-
You're crashing by design
Bill Forsyth was probably playfully messing with us, dropping all these coincidences that make her seem to be a mermaid. However, I always figured she was totally human -- albeit with some idiosyncrasies that's supposed to make her seem mermaid-ish.
sharebefore saying, 'Aye. They were wrong.'
Why were they wrong?
Because she was a Selkie.
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Google the word Selkie and suddenly several scenes and dialogue in the movie make sense.
shareJust got to watch this film for the Nth time. It's peppered with tiny grains of humour and fantasy. You have to take it as it is, and, of course the webbed feet and talk about mermaids are intended to work together to give you a mind morsel, perhaps a hint that mythological beings walk among us.
shareOP--you are NOT reading too much into it. I think it is entirely intentional that the movie suggests Marina might be a mermaid. I also think it is left entirely ambiguous, and up to each person to decide. Just part of the fun. The town casts its spell, and maybe you can believe while you are there...then you go back to normal life, and well...what was I thinking?
I've had the same delicious yes-no-maybe conundrum for literally 3 decades about Marina the Maybe Mermaid.
At first yes--the name, the feet, how she sure seems to stay underwater a long time while her scuba gear sits unused on the beach, and when she flips into the water, could that really be a tail? Then when I got a higher resolution TV, I could see that it was just her two legs close together. Oh well, just a bit of Forsythe fun after all. BUT when I watched it again a few days ago, some things occured to me that hadn't in the many previous viewings.
Where the heck does Marina STAY? There's only one hotel in town, and she sure aint there! It sems like a pretty lonely area, so unlikely she's booked one town over. We never see a rental car, like coworker Danny has. She just appears to Danny after the ceilidh. Did she hike in heels from Aberdeen? As far as we see, she spends almost all her time in the water and seems to get everywhere by swimming great distances with or without scuba gear. So I guess she is booked at the Atlantis Hilton, where she keeps her fabulous party dress.
Yes, she is a scientist, but when she dismisses the story of seals being mermaids, "They were wrong"--I think she means the sailors were wrong about the seals, not that the existence of mermaids is wrong. She loves the sea more than anything. Now I think she IS a mermaid, or maybe a selkie. She sure seemed to have some firsthand knowledge of what rascals those seals are, heh.
While I think "literally" the OP may be reading too much into it -- i.e., I think Bill Forsythe's literal intention was for Marina to simply be a human with a strange "mutation".
However, I also think that "figuratively" the OP is NOT reading too much into it, because I also think Forsythe was being a bit playful with us by (on the one hand) telling us that she is simply a human with webbing between her toes, but (on the other hand) playfully telling us "but what if she's not?".
Confession: I haven't read all of the posts so this may have been mentioned. The story seems to use what is sometimes called "magic realism". the film is somewhere between the world that we know and some sort of imaginary place - too realistic for "fantasy" and yet...
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