The Elephant Man (1980)

Too much of everything

Just perfect...

I wanted to but couldn't!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The movie tells the tragic story of Joseph (John) Merrick who lived in Victorian England. As a biopic, it is focused on the relation between Merrick and Dr. Frederic Treves who saves him from freak shows and arranges a permanent room in London hospital where Merrick spends rest of his life. Except some deviations which probably don't affect the main theme, the movie in general sticks to the historical facts. Anthony Hopkins displays a superb performance as Dr. Treves who finds himself in a moral dilemma: his humane approach to help Merrick from the cruelties of outside world is counterbalanced by his scientific curiosity which drives him to study Merrick's abnormal physical condition and exhibit him in conferences reminiscent of despicable freak shows. In comparison to the pictures of actual J. Merrick of his time, the makeup artist does a phenomenal job on John Hurt to recreate Merrick's disfigured appearance. The fact that all this happens in a pre-CGI era further adds to the value of the work. Finally, John Hurt delivers a top notch performance in a difficult acting job where he successfully plays Merrick's physical impediments along with his mental and psychological state. On the negative side, the pace of the movie is a bit slow and the narrative is quite depressing which is deliberately aided by the black and white shooting of the movie. Merrick's physical condition and the resulting mental burden on himself get us all moving but can't carry the movie for 2 hrs alone. The surrounding stories involving his abuse by his "manager" and others, the curiosity he evokes in London high society lack in human drama and tension. The subplots of these stories are bland and too weak to pick up the crawling tempo. Finally, the movie is very categorical in displaying the attitude of people towards Merrick. Overall, we are exposed to three types of people of the time: those living underground and suffer silently due to their freakish appearance sympathize with him; the general public react very cruelly on streets and pubs towards Merrick; the concert going, educated, higher class elites on the other hand are benevolent and behave more accommodating.

The movie "The Elephant Man" is one of David Lynch's first experiences and one of his classic works. This is a form of admiration. Fine, fancy and thoughtful framing.The film process is slow, but the slowdown is accurate and accurate.The actors have all come out well and everything is in place. The content of the screenplay is also very nice. He speaks of isolation that exists in all people. An elephant man in all of us humans.

I recommend this movie to people who have empathy and who can think sensibly. Maybe it can be watched by teens from 15-16. It's story about human, who wants be like normal people. Merrics ( the main character) hasn't got a family, because his mother was trampled by elephant, when he was in her stomach. This human was ugly and suffered from humiliation of public, because he worked on circus of freaks, where people was mistake for their. One day a young doctor Trivz, saw him and took for carrying. But Merrics can't live a usual life of normal people and his owner Baits is disappointed, when Merrics goes away with his savior. The film was directed by David Linch. In leading roles: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Ann Bencrot. It's good and strong drama, which will make you think about the attitude of the people and no tears anywhere, because in the plot you can't find a laugh's moments.

This is a very early film in Lynch's professional career, his 1st major studio production following his much more personal, intimate and outrageously bizarre masterpiece, Eraserhead. That freshman effort is perhaps Lynch's most pure expression of cinematic artistry—a fiercely idiosyncratic, absurdly inscrutable gesture of audio/visual mischievous of the most masterful kind. Contained within Lynch's debut feature length movie can be found the bulk of the sublime ideas and ingenious cinematic techniques which infused all his later films with such shockingly vivid & visceral emotionalism. Eraserhead is such a powerfully effective bit of cinematic wizardry that upon witnessing it—no, upon being assaulted by it!—Mel Brooks was convinced that its mad genius creator had to be the director of the unusually odd film which he was producing, and thus David Lynch was hurled into the gaping, yawning, voracious orifice that is Hollywood film-making. Luckily, David Lynch had a magnificently talented cast (Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud, Anne Bancroft, Freddie Jones, and of course a brilliant John Hurt) as well as a superb script (Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren & David Lynch) with which to fashion his quaint Victorian period piece/archly Gothic nightmare monster movie. The narrative is strikingly concise and terse, almost bleak in its unadorned simplicity, yet more than ample to support the gargantuan mass of barely tolerable pathos which burdens nearly every scene. That's not to say it's a tortuous slog—no, not hardly. The Elephant Man is only as emotionally crushing as David Lynch has astutely calculated we can endure, and it regularly assumes a surprisingly delicate & buoyant demeanor. In other words, it's an intensely disturbing, wonderfully rich & rewarding emotional roller coaster. Lynch's monster is a ghastly creature dwelling in the darkest, dankest recesses of the human psyche, and it's by dragging us kicking & screaming down to those formidably threatening depths that he's able to then kindly usher us to the shimmering splendor of an equally remote but welcoming inner realm where resides compassion, empathy & genuine humanity. It seems it's only by directly facing life's most daunting, most ugly, most horrific truths can we hope for any real joy, or at least any relief. That's heavy, isn't it?