The Elephant Man1 tells the strange story of a disfigured man in Queen Victoria's England; more precisely: the beginnings, the rescue, the development, the kidnapping, again the rescue, and the death of one John Merrick, the archetypical kind soul exhibiting a grotesque appearance, a weirdo with artistic sensibilities, a beast that is more human than the supposed humans around him, a contrast between appearance and essence. This is one layer revealing itself to us, among others, in what I suppose is an early surrealistic Lynchian style.
The surface side of the movie is obviously the social one: Frederick Treves finds John Merrick and somehow manages to pull him out of the circus world and into the civilized one, where by Treves' own realization, Merrick goes from being a circus weirdo to a high-class one, but nevertheless a curiosity for everyone more than an actual human being. The whole plot revolves around this pendulation between Merrick's attempt at a normal life and his being pulled back into the circus, even when, or especially when he is placed in the role of an observer at Madge Kendal's theatre. His last falling asleep, the one that kills him, must then come from a realization that he is as human as they get, and that he can rest on that above all else, which is the entire dramatic flair of the movie.
As for The Elephant Man's deeper side, I may not exactly be qualified to comment on it properly, but I will try nevertheless; and as at the very least a Lynch viewer, I think that it is a combination of his technological naturalism2 and a certain form of surrealism. For example, at the beginning of the film, we see a woman struck down by a couple of elephants, seemingly struggling for her life. As with all his movies, it may be anybody's guess what the author meant by that, and my guess is that the woman in question, John Merrick's mother, was impregnated by the elephants and that this is how she gave birth to the so-called abomination; and that the elephants in question are a metaphor for the industrial age, more precisely its animalic coldness, which makes John Merrick the elephant man the archetypal byproduct of that age, much like today's "twenty-first century schizoid man", only transposed in that era3. What follows from that is a division and an antithesis, between the best in humanity (Treves, Kendal, Gomm, Mothershead) on one hand, and the worst of it (Bytes, Renshaw) on the other. Who knows, maybe David Lynch has a knack for portraying the so-called innocent victims of their age, of which Laura Palmer is, I suppose, but one.
As far as the technical and the artistic side goes: even if we leave aside the dark, beautiful, black and white expressionist videography, the scenography, which I am sure was an inspiration for many of the subsequent surrealist pieces, or the haunting sound design -- even if we leave all these aside, the British theatricals are an absolute pleasure to view, and overall quite a contrast from the typical American crap that Hollywood provided one to two decades later. John Hurt during his moments of silence is a few levels above your typical American actor at his best.
Now, I'll admit that I'm a David Lynch "fan" of sorts, if you were to call me that, so I'll default to stating that The Elephant Man is a superb movie, despite any flaws that one may find in it. But I watched it after almost a decade of putting off his early creations, after finding Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart too raw for some reason, and after repeated attempts to reach the end of the depths of his Inland Empire. So as far as Lynch's earlier movies go, Dune must have been a special type of failure, since The Elephant Man, that came before it, is way more well thought out and mature of a piece. In any case, it not only did not disappoint, but it appointed quite a bit.
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1980, based on The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences, by Frederick Treves, and The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, by Ashley Montagu; produced by Jonathan Sanger, executive produced by the prolific Mel Brooks, directed by David Lynch, starring John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Hannah Gordon, Freddie Jones and others. ↩
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In most Lynch movies, and maybe with very few exceptions, the occult element does not rise from any supposedly misunderstood "magic", but from what nowadays we deem to be ordinary stuff, say, electricity in Twin Peaks, for example; or the sheer act of recording images on a movie reel, in Inland Empire or Mulholland Drive, and so on and so forth.
In The Elephant Man, the so-called "technological naturalism" can be found in the gas lamps, in the ubiquitous coal, the steam engines and in the gunpowder. They may be there for historical accuracy, sure, but the way in which they're there is moreover meant to set the mood and immerse the viewer into that universe. ↩
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King Crimson and David Lynch paint the same poetic phenomenon, i.e. alienation, in different forms. ↩