Avaka27 This movie makes me cry through its entirety, so pure and beautiful . The acting , the directing , the cinematography , the makeup , the story , the dialogue... It is the perfect summation of what it is to be pure and loving life . Oh, John Merrick I thank you so much , and your love for your mother will never be forgotten. When I become rich enough i will have every single frame of the movie oil painted and hung up in a very long hallway , so when you walk the whole distance the movie will play out in stills . The greatest story told . " A friend " .

DonAlberto David Lynch has something of a reputation amongst what might be defined as Postmodern cinema. His films haven't always met my desires or expectations; not always have i been able to interpret correctly this or that hint in his films or to find out the meaning of one of his indisputable works of art.Yet, that's not an obstacle for my to be able to admit that he is as talented as any director out there. Stating the contrary would be both short-sighting and an unjustified attack on his talent. Besides, even if I don't share the same values his promotes with his cinema, I'll always admire someone who has enough grit to stick to his guns when needed, someone who upholds a certain view of what cinema should be like. The Elephant man is good prove of that and like with the best John Ford's films leaves you with sniff of good cinema. One can only kneel down and pray to God so it would never go ways, so it would stay with you, by your sided, through thick and thin, through your darkest hours.That's precisely the theme of the Elephant Man, as the protagonist, an Englishman who goes by the name of John Merrick is the embodiment of sorrow and despair. Born with deformities all over his body, his left arm is useless, his face looks torn as if it was run over by a steamroller.John Hurt is magnificent portraying this half man, half elephant. it bestows upon the character such solemnity and dignity that it's difficult to get your eyes off him. I couldn't image another actor doing a job as equal as good. There is a showdown as for performances between John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins. The latter's character is a doctor that one day comes across the circus the Elephant man is travelling with. Out of interest and I'd like to think love decides to buy him off the manager. He took it to the hospital he works at and, at first, the sees in him everybody else sees: a monster. As times goes by, though, the monster's humanity and tenderness seep into the world and manifest themselves to everybody with the will to see. It's then when the doctor starts to see "through him".Just as the glimmering smile of a baby can shake off the lingering sadness that surround one's heart after a break up, you'll turn this movie into a memory, a moment of clarity an love to come back to when the monster we all carry insides us wants to take over.

classicsoncall As compelling and at times, inspirational as the movie is, I was left somewhat disappointed with the film after I looked up some information on the real John Merrick. His real name was Joseph Carey Merrick, and it's true that he was born with severe deformities; if you look up a picture of the man, you'll realize what an outstanding job the filmmakers achieved here with the makeup for the character of The Elephant Man, portrayed by John Hurt. The movie John Merrick looks exactly like the real John Merrick.Why director David Lynch decided to go with the opening sequence hinting at the origins of Merrick are simply confounding to me. It actually bothered me because there's no semblance of reality to it. In life, Merrick was not abandoned at birth, though his mother died when he was only nine years old. When his father remarried, both he and his stepmother rejected him. Leaving school at the age of thirteen and finding it difficult to find employment, he entered the Leicester Union Workhouse where he remained for four years until the age of seventeen.It was actually Merrick himself who sought out a showman in order to be exhibited. While on a tour in Brussels, he was robbed and abandoned by his manager, eventually finding his way back to London. It's at this point in the movie when his association with Dr. Frederick Treves really began, although Treves first met him some time earlier when he lived at a shop across the street from The London Hospital.If one allows for the historical inaccuracies, the movie can be a really touching experience, and I found myself definitely inspired by John Merrick's humanity and nobility of spirit. The film forces one to consider whether you could have summoned up the same amount of compassion for the kind of person Merrick was that Dr. Treves came by so naturally. One might ask one's self the same question Treves did at one point - "Am I a good man, or am I a bad man?" Be that as it may, if you go by what's presented on screen, the movie definitely commands accolades. Director Lynch treats his subject with the same care and compassion that Treves showed The Elephant Man. The real John Merrick only lived to the age of twenty seven, and his cause of death is hinted at near the end of the film, with Merrick's haunting study of a picture depicting a girl sleeping in bed. Earlier in the story, Merrick expressed his desire that he could sleep like a normal person. Because of his deformities he had to sleep sitting up, but when his death occurred, the official cause was noted as asphyxia. However an autopsy by Dr. Treves revealed a dislocated neck. It caused this viewer to consider whether Merrick intentionally brought about a resolution to the quality of his life as a spectacle.

eddiez61 This is a very early film in Lynch's professional career, his 1st major studio production following his much more personal, intimate and outrageously bizarre masterpiece, Eraserhead. That freshman effort is perhaps Lynch's most pure expression of cinematic artistry—a fiercely idiosyncratic, absurdly inscrutable gesture of audio/visual mischievous of the most masterful kind. Contained within Lynch's debut feature length movie can be found the bulk of the sublime ideas and ingenious cinematic techniques which infused all his later films with such shockingly vivid & visceral emotionalism. Eraserhead is such a powerfully effective bit of cinematic wizardry that upon witnessing it—no, upon being assaulted by it!—Mel Brooks was convinced that its mad genius creator had to be the director of the unusually odd film which he was producing, and thus David Lynch was hurled into the gaping, yawning, voracious orifice that is Hollywood film-making. Luckily, David Lynch had a magnificently talented cast (Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud, Anne Bancroft, Freddie Jones, and of course a brilliant John Hurt) as well as a superb script (Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren & David Lynch) with which to fashion his quaint Victorian period piece/archly Gothic nightmare monster movie. The narrative is strikingly concise and terse, almost bleak in its unadorned simplicity, yet more than ample to support the gargantuan mass of barely tolerable pathos which burdens nearly every scene. That's not to say it's a tortuous slog—no, not hardly. The Elephant Man is only as emotionally crushing as David Lynch has astutely calculated we can endure, and it regularly assumes a surprisingly delicate & buoyant demeanor. In other words, it's an intensely disturbing, wonderfully rich & rewarding emotional roller coaster. Lynch's monster is a ghastly creature dwelling in the darkest, dankest recesses of the human psyche, and it's by dragging us kicking & screaming down to those formidably threatening depths that he's able to then kindly usher us to the shimmering splendor of an equally remote but welcoming inner realm where resides compassion, empathy & genuine humanity. It seems it's only by directly facing life's most daunting, most ugly, most horrific truths can we hope for any real joy, or at least any relief. That's heavy, isn't it?