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The Elephant Man
David Lynch, the director of Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, created his masterpiece with 1980's The Elephant Man, his exquisitely mounted, fact-based tale of friendship, bigotry, and tolerance that is so riveting and heartbreaking that this reviewer spent the entire running time with his stomach in knots and fighting tears , eventually losing said fight to this movie powerhouse that received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
The setting is 1860's Victorian London where an important surgeon named Frederick Treves (Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins) meets a hideously deformed man named John Merrick (the late John Hurt) who is resigned himself to his life as a carnival sideshow freak owned by a Mr. Bytes. We watch Treves try to help Merrick retrieve his dignity as a human being even if he can't fix what's wrong with him physically.
Lynch applies loving care to a beautifully crafted screenplay that tells a detailed and believable story rich with three dimensional characters rich with believable emotions. The characters involved in this story are surprisingly painted in realistic shades of gray that I really didn't see coming. Even the evil Mr. Bytes, who uses Merrick for economic purposes, is provided a moment near the film's opening where a speck of genuine affection is displayed for John. The reactions to people's first sight of Merrick are all believable and the transition that some characters make to respecting who John is completely enchants the viewer, and in another realistic turn that we don't see coming, John's journey to acceptance takes a dark and heartbreaking turn during the third act that absolutely destroyed me.
One of my favorite parts of the story is the instant and believable acceptance that John receives from an acclaimed actress (Anne Bancroft), who treats John like the sensitive and intelligent person he is revealed to be. Bancroft sparkles in this scene and watching the two characters reciting Romeo and Juliet was a joy. Also loved the scene where John learns the 23rd Psalm. Loved when John asked Treves if he could cure him and Treves gave him an honest answer without any hesitation
The film deserved every Oscar nomination it received (and a couple it didn't), though it didn't win a single award, falling under the crush of Raging Bull and Ordinary People. Filmed in stunning black and white, the film features brilliant performances from Hopkins, Hurt (unrecognizable under an Oscar-worthy makeup job a year before the Academy invented the category), John Gielgud as the hospital administrator, Wendy Hiller as the head nurse, and Freddie Jones as Bytes. In a word, a breathtaking film experience.
David Lynch, the director of Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, created his masterpiece with 1980's The Elephant Man, his exquisitely mounted, fact-based tale of friendship, bigotry, and tolerance that is so riveting and heartbreaking that this reviewer spent the entire running time with his stomach in knots and fighting tears , eventually losing said fight to this movie powerhouse that received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
The setting is 1860's Victorian London where an important surgeon named Frederick Treves (Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins) meets a hideously deformed man named John Merrick (the late John Hurt) who is resigned himself to his life as a carnival sideshow freak owned by a Mr. Bytes. We watch Treves try to help Merrick retrieve his dignity as a human being even if he can't fix what's wrong with him physically.
Lynch applies loving care to a beautifully crafted screenplay that tells a detailed and believable story rich with three dimensional characters rich with believable emotions. The characters involved in this story are surprisingly painted in realistic shades of gray that I really didn't see coming. Even the evil Mr. Bytes, who uses Merrick for economic purposes, is provided a moment near the film's opening where a speck of genuine affection is displayed for John. The reactions to people's first sight of Merrick are all believable and the transition that some characters make to respecting who John is completely enchants the viewer, and in another realistic turn that we don't see coming, John's journey to acceptance takes a dark and heartbreaking turn during the third act that absolutely destroyed me.
One of my favorite parts of the story is the instant and believable acceptance that John receives from an acclaimed actress (Anne Bancroft), who treats John like the sensitive and intelligent person he is revealed to be. Bancroft sparkles in this scene and watching the two characters reciting Romeo and Juliet was a joy. Also loved the scene where John learns the 23rd Psalm. Loved when John asked Treves if he could cure him and Treves gave him an honest answer without any hesitation
The film deserved every Oscar nomination it received (and a couple it didn't), though it didn't win a single award, falling under the crush of Raging Bull and Ordinary People. Filmed in stunning black and white, the film features brilliant performances from Hopkins, Hurt (unrecognizable under an Oscar-worthy makeup job a year before the Academy invented the category), John Gielgud as the hospital administrator, Wendy Hiller as the head nurse, and Freddie Jones as Bytes. In a word, a breathtaking film experience.