This "story of the human soul" can't decide what it wants!

Rating: 4/10 (13 June 2002)

I saw this supposed masterpiece this week and was pretty surprised people didnt see its flaws. i see three major flaws in the movie.
Note: There are what could be called spoilers in this review, but then again there arent really secrets in the movie...

First, the beginning and ending sequneces try to be mystical and deep-but theyre not. They look and feel stupid.
Second, the costume for the Elephant Man was, at the start of the movie, gruesome and disturbing-because they showed him so little. But as the movie wore on and we were continually exposed to it, the cosatume slowly begins to lose its shock value, and it becomes almost amusing at how unrealistically deformed this man is. I think that the movie, although I know this denies not only the title but some of the basis of the story, would have benefited better by a deformed man, but not THAT deformed, past the point of any man ever to come to the public's attnetion.
Third, and most important, was how David Lynch/ the screenwrite wavered between values. One moment (i.e. when The Elephant Man is being abused by the drunk man and his friends at the hospital) the movie seems to be expressing a particularly dark, pessimistic view of human nature. Yet, at the end of the nature, The Elephant Man ahs become a popular commodity, able to attend high society plays and receive standing ovations. This is so stupid its overwhelming. How can one crowd beat him and treat him like a freak and yet another give him a standing ovation at a play. In reality, as sad as it is (and that sadness should have been conveyed instead of this wavering between the two), a man that deformed would have to be a recluse, and never come into the public for fear of harassment and ridicule.