good but not great

Rating: 7/10 (11 December 2002)

"The Elephant Man", rather than being all around great, is actually a mixture of good and bad. The good is that , well, first of all, the cinematography is nothing less than amazing, feeling like a series of cutting edge paintings. For example, all the dark passage ways utilized really do seem scary and mysterious, the extended shot of the pipework is art at its finest, and the dream sequences are some of the most disturbing ever committed to film. Otherwise, the film has all around excellent acting (Hopkins as Dr. Treves is especially memorable, presenting the character as a gentle but realistic hero with self conscious doubts about his own virtues) and no punches are pulled in presenting the deformed main character being abused or making others feel uneasy. Indeed, in most of the scenes where Merrick tries to interact with people in a normal way, you can just sense how awkward the "normal" characters feel in spite of trying to act like his deformity does not matter. And when he gets bullied, he REALLY gets bullied (you´ll probably cheer when Dr. Treves gives the abusive hospital worker a serious a-kicking in return). Otherwise, though, the problem with the movie is that Merrick is not really a well fleshed out character (no pun intended). The basic recipe for him is "take a deformed person and make him stereotypically innocent and slightly socially retarded to show how isolated he was". John Hurt conveys this quality well under a heavy makeup job but that´s pretty much the beginning and end of the character. Also, David Lynch, being David Lynch, usually focuses on getting the most violent shock value, absurdity, surrealist weirdness, or odd awkwardness out of most scenes. Plus, 1940s style melodrama and "Eraserhead" style surrealism, as good as they are on their own terms, are uncomfortably combined here. Hence, it sometimes even feels as if Lynch is making fun of the screenplay. All in all, though, it´s worth a look if you want to see something different.