You have to see this. Even if you hate Lynch's other stuff, just do.

Rating: 8/10 (18 February 2019)

I adore this movie.
From it's first scene I was captivated. I wish more movies would start with an abstract sequence. I rewatched that scene twice when I was done. It was hypnotic, delicate yet quite terrifying in a unique way.
It doesn't disappoint when the movie begins properly. The stark black and white cinematography paint a vivid picture of industrial pictorial London. It feels like a fantasy but that's the charm. I think they did use Ultra high frequency so it's TECHNICALLY in colour, just the only colours black, white and grey. The effect is a crystal clear picture of a world that swings between immovably clinical and sordid.
There is a fairy tail feel as Joseph is rescued from his cruel owner (not historically accurate, the freak show owner was a friend to Joseph, but who cares), built not from magic but a story of victim of a cruel nature finding tenderness.
It would be so easy to make a story that felt exploitative, or trite or both with this premise but the handling is delicate enough to appeal to cynical pretentious teens (like I was) and find a real pathos, never quite losing its dark power.
Perhaps I'm a little biased by the make up. It is endlessly fascinating to watch John Hurt in make up and listen to him speak in that magically refined yet impedimented voice. I thought the movie would just be unsettling and I was indeed quite terrified of the build up to seeing Joseph. The essence of it though is a dignified message of enduring humanity in a dark world that never gets mawkish thanks to a feather touch that rises only at just the right moment.
It was the first movie to make me cry (excluding the Never ending story but I was pretty little then). It really is a beautiful experience, not surrealist exactly, but stylized in way we don't often see. It makes me wonder what other marvels Lynch could have given us if only he had been on a short leash all his career.