The Elephant Man

Rating: 10/10 (14 May 2016)

David Lynch is known for his surreal, complex films, but this simple, heart wrenching story about the resilience of the human spirit is his most beautiful and yet grueling film simultaneously.
And I know that to most people, greuling would seem like the better word to describe this movie than beautiful, judging by its harsh black and white aesthetic and it's utterly depressing main story, but like it's subject, there is so much more underneath it's exterior. It actually has fantastic, truly uplifting moments on par with the Shawshank Redemption and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest that literally had me in tears occasionally, and for me that really isn't common. This is due in no small part to the incredible performance by both John Hurt as John Merrick, who portrays surprisingly more happiness than pain underneath the layers of Merrick's physical suffering, and Anthony Hopkins subtly caring performance as Fred Treves, Merrick's friend.
It is about Joseph Merrick, or as many know him, "the elephant man". He has been looked on as a creature or a beast his entire life, being paraded a around in a freakshow owned by a man that abuses him. But when Fred Treves, a doctor, finds him in a freakshow he takes him into the London hospital. He doesn't talk for a long time, leading Treves to believe he is just stupid, and hope to God that he is stupid, because if he isn't then that would mean his he has had bottle up his intelligence and true self for his entire life. But this only makes it all the more depressing when later Treves discovers his true personality just before they were about to kick him out. He ends up staying, and we learn that his whole life, all he has really wanted was to be normal, be loved, and know his mother. This is where "The Elephant Man" challenges us as viewer's to see beyond the exterior of the people we stare at on the street, because there is so much more beyond that, and all they really want is to be normal, even though they seem cursed from birth not to. It encourages us to try and understand the unfamiliar instead of dismiss it, because to be loved and to be normal isn't just what Joseph Merrick wants, it's what we all want.