Sad and gripping

Rating: 8/10 (15 April 2007)

I had never seen "The Elephant Man" and considering it was made 27 years ago, it was almost as if I were watching an old black and white movie.
Despite excellent performances all around, I felt there were several moments when the camera moved in a bit too quickly on certain shots, making us keenly aware this was a movie. Also, the dialog written for John Merrick (the Elephant Man) seems designed to make everyone burst into tears. It did move me, indeed, but it just seemed perhaps a little too planned.
Because this film was made in 1980, the make-up, as brilliant as it was, seems like make-up. Poor John Hurt was forced to walk around with this huge bubble head which makes him look distinctly like The Alien's spawn. If the lighting hit it a certain way, it had a sort of almost Halloween-mask feeling about it, sort of plastic and fake. I hate to say that, because obviously the make-up artist did a superb job, and they based the shape on the bone structure of the poor individual who suffered these ghastly diseases.
Anthony Hopkins, as always, is brilliant. He really can do no wrong. John Hurt, I thought, was superb. He should have won an Oscar for having to live inside that head, plus walk as if his spine was deformed. He must have been in agony for the entire film.
David Lynch was unquestionably the best choice for this film and I think he's utterly brilliant. But I did think some of the lighting was a bit too bright in some scenes; I felt the sick and tragic mad crowd party crashing scene went on a hair too long and the music seemed just a tad too calculated, and the ending, when we are suddenly thrust into the starry galaxy was so reminiscent of "The Twilight Zone" that that is exactly what I blurted out to my friend as we watched it.
And yet... the story pulls you in and keeps you with it, and you cannot help but feel absolute pity for this poor soul, and when he says, "I'm not an animal! I'm a human being!" -- you cannot help thinking, "What is wrong with the human race that they are so quick to condemn and destroy all that is not like them?" The Elephant Man was, at that time, what they used to call a "freak." It is absolutely monstrous and horrid to think or to even imagine that these poor people were thrust into circus shows and treated like slave animals.
This film forces you to reconsider your own boundaries. As I looked at John Merrick, this poor creature who had the misfortune to suffer such disfigurement, I decided I would love him, and learn to love anybody like that, because no one in this world deserves to be without love.
I'm glad I saw it and I hope I can keep these feeling in mind the next time I feel sorry for myself and/or the next time I criticize someone for looking something other than what I think is "right."