The good ones, the bad ones and the very ugly one

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2005)

David Lynch surprise a lot of us with the story of John Merrick (a great John Hurt), a Circus freak of the XIX century which has his face and body totally deformed, to the point that people frightens when they see him. He lives with his "owner", Bytes (Freddie Jones), a really mean man, who gets paid for showing him in a cage, in a vulgar and horrid spectacle. But one successful Doctor (Anthony Hopkins, sober and good as always) in London finds John in a Carnival and he wants to help him.
At the beginning, the only thing he wants is to show the man (just like the other man used to do) in an anatomy class for doctors, but once he get to know John a little bit, he gets a room for him at the Hospital and he protect him from Bytes, from whom he had been stolen.
At first, John seemed to be dumb and stupid, but after a while, we noticed that he wasn't any of those things: he can talk (he has some difficulties but he can) and he can also read (not a common skill at the time). But what really shocks Doctor Treeves and us is the fact that John is the most pure and gentle man we could ever imagine. He is incredibly kind and sensitive, and he feels that he had found a friend in the Doc.
The fact is that John became very famous in the city just for being deformed and living at the Hospital, and with him became Doctor Treeves very popular.
And here is one of the keys of the whole film: Dr. Treeves ask himself whether he's good or bad, because he understands that he made the same that Bytes, he won something by showing the monster.
But what I think is the most important element is the fact that John could be the purest person in the world, gentle, kind and polite, but he is so extremely ugly, that people can't really love him. I know this could sound crazy in some way, but I beg you to be honest and ask yourself if you could. Remember this scene in which an old couple visit him in his isolated room: remember the expression in their faces... he can be the best man ever, but he's still a monster and we suffer every time we see him.
So, we get to see that there are good people (like Merrick or Treeves or the other freaks from Circus), there are bad people (Bytes and some that I rather not mention) and there is also ugly people. But maybe we are some kind of a mix of all this...
The plot is very good. The acting is good as well (it is really funny how a lot of us, including me, say that John Hurt performance is great, in spite he is wearing a mask and a lot of make up from the beginning to the end, and he has almost no expression in it!) and this is until now, the best movie i've seen made by David's Lynch peculiar brain.