[Namaste]

so..i rented LITW again the other day..and I noticed (for the first time) that Story's hair progressively goes from red to blonde as the movie plays out. Anyone have any ideas why this might have happened? Do you think it could be the chlorine in the water? heh. I think the scrunt poison may have had something to do with it...but what could it represent symbolically? personal growth? becoming what she was meant to be?

another thing I realized was how Shyamalan again used rain (and water from sprinklers) to represent vulnerability like he has in the village and unbreakable. also, i noticed the party flier for the first time baby's on the half tip party to wecome the guy in 13b. Shyamalan's character's sister says "blim blam" (the word one of the smokers suggested as a new catchphrase) haha..i noticed that for the first time. Also, I noticed that the young asian girl has a crush on Cleaveland. if you pay attention to her interactions with him, camera angles, etc you can catch it. Especially in the scene 'madam narf' she seems to think Cleaveland may be so interested in the story because it gives him an excuse to talk to her. I wish they had done a little more characterization on Mr. Lee. He could have been a much more powerful element in the film with just a little more effort on characterization. if he had been given a scene somewhere in the first 2/3 of the movie it wouldnt have hurt at all.

[Unbroken]

About the hair... my little sister once had a mermaid Barbie who's hair color changed when put in the water. Maybe Night took the idea... I don't know. 

[Namaste]

think it might have been red because she had been out of the water all night when cleavland woke up? she was scared to go back in the water..then she gets wetter as the movie progresses (shower, then rain) so maybe her hair turns red as she dehydrates...i dunno..not very interesting lol

[Mr_Glass.1]

No, it grows whiter as she dehydrates, or at least the more she stays out of the water.  If you notice there is a scene when Cleveland is gone, and she looks at her hair and it is going white, so then she goes into the shower.  It starts to regain a little more color, and then when she is sitting in the shower when everybody is around her and talking to her, her hair is red again. 

[Namaste]

ok..but she was out of the water all night in cleaveland's house and it was just a little white..then she was out in the rain+in the shower for a while, and when they brought her in after the 2nd scrunt attack her hair was whiter than ever. Maybe it could be that she was away from the blue world...Shyamalan likes to use red to represent life force, so...

[Mr_Glass.1]

Yeah, when she got attacked by the scrunt she was dying, therefore her hair was getting whiter.  I need to watch it again, and pay attention to her hair in every scene.

[Mr. Heep]

Turns whiter the longer she stays away from water. The reason it still contained redness after she saved Cleveland was because she hadn't been out for very long. It wasn't all night, it was just an hour or so. It's still night when Cleveland takes her to the poolhouse.

You'll notice during the Healing scene that once she's healed, she awakens and her hair is totally white, and it had only been about 2-4 hours. Perhaps scratches from a scrunt in addition to dehydration makes her hair turn white twice as quickly. That's probably why her hair was still pretty red after she saved Cleveland; she wasn't scratched as much, though she did have one small one on her thigh.

[Wags]

Night had once said that Story is something like an angel, I think he mentioned it in the "Man Who Heard Voices" book.  Cleveland even mentions that he thinks she's an angel during the healing. I personally think that the hair started turning blonde/white as the movie progressed because 1) she was in fact out of the water, but also that 2) it was Night's way of transitioning the audience's thinking, sort of moving past the idea that Story was a Narf and moving more towards the idea that she was an Angel.  Because, at least for me, when I think of an Angel, I think of a sort of bright, ethereal sort of being.  And, no offense to red heads, but I think the blonde/white hair sort of conveyed a more angelic sort of persona.

[Imalshen]

It was her metamorphosis into the Madame Narf. Her appearance changes and she goes from being a young, pretty but timid creature to someone angelic and beautiful. Her personality even changes a little after she awakens. She doesn't show fear when the scrunt shows up, like the other times, though she looks a bit hesistant when she says goodbye to Cleveland.