Beautiful

Rating: 9/10 (15 October 2007)

The Elephant Man is a simply beautiful movie. Everything about it is done with such a subtle, frank beauty and honesty that it is a truly difficult quality to put into words. It is an exceptional film.
These qualities are truly remarkable given what the movie could have been. With such a topic, The Elephant Man could have been anywhere from pretentious drivel to an exploitation film, or could have simply missed the mark. True, the writings on which the movie was based are quite venerable, but the possibility that this could have been an absolutely awful film was certainly still there.
One of the major reasons The Elephant Man works the way it does is that everything about it feels, well, right. Natural. Take the movie's most obvious characteristic: it's filmed in black and white. Now, there are a million little reasons why this works so well, each is too small to get into properly. The fact, however, is that it works. It works marvelously, actually. Another 'right' thing about The Elephat Man is David Lynch's direction. Every scene is important, every one with a purpose. The film never once becomes boring or starts to drag. Not a second is erroneous. However, the audience also gets 'the full story,' so to speak. When the movie ends with Merrick's death, the audience is sadly and strangely satisfied with this conclusion, and all the prior events that build up to it.
John (in reality, Joseph) Merrick himself is a lovely character. Lynch's presentation of him to the audience is brilliant. John is grotesquely disfigured, but we aren't repulsed by him. By that same merit, we don't automatically feel sorry for him because of his condition. Instead, the audience simply accepts John Merrick. We come to know him not as an elephant man, but simply as a man. The compassion the audience feels for John is for him as a man. When he is harassed and beaten, we feel his indignation. When he is accepted and respected, we feel his joy.
John Hurt's performance as the title character is great, and is probably one of the greatest and most underrated portrayals of all time. Everything from the voice to the body language is completely convincing and sincere. The subtleties of his performance are something that is often overlooked. From the nervous confidence in all of his actions to the frankness in some of his reactions (when he is forced to view himself in a mirror, the startled scream he emits conveys about a dozen different things, each one of them feeling genuine), everything about the title performance is done so perfectly and fits so well that we don't even notice most of the time.
All in all, The Elephant Man is a great movie, and is certainly deserving of its place on the Top 250.