IMDb #133 Review: The Elephant Man (1980)

Source: Wikipedia

A hideously disfigured gentleman goes from being the gawking curiosity of moral degenerates to...a gawking curiosity for London's rich and famous.

Upward social mobility for the grievously handicapped? Top marks, Victorian England.

An esteemed doctor discovers the poor fellow as a back-alley attraction. He rescues the wheezy bag-headed chap from his cartoonishly evil self-appointed owner.

The elephant man, so named for the herd of elephants that trampled his pregnant mother and thus caused his deformity (dammit, Victorian England), becomes the talk of the Royal Society. And the bane of the hospital wait staff.

Most visitors experience difficulty ignoring the Elephant Man in the room. But slowly, they realize he's human. Kind. Intelligent. Even charming. He cannot leave his well-furnished hospital room, so to bring him into London society, they bring London society to him.

Not that the gutter-dwellers have forgotten him. They plague him, every hobbling step of the way.

One neat thing I noticed: the audience's journey parallels the characters'. For the first half-hour, the camera doesn't display the John Merrick's full face. Suddenly there's a full-frontal view, in all its swollen glory. But, over time, we become acclimated and grow to see the man inside the body.

The presentation adds to the effect. The black-and-white aesthetic recreates the past as seen in old photos, and creates a masterful atmosphere of discomfort. The makeup is horribly convincing. The soft, sweet soundtrack paints an eerie backdrop on the gray canvas. And on that backdrop the cast nails brilliantly nuanced performances. (Except for the gleefully sadistic one-dimensional villains.)

Speaking of which. Having experienced high society only makes it worse when blackhearted bastards drag the celebrity back into a freak show (in continental Europe, so MUCH WORSE). But tragedy leads to triumph, as the other "freaks" -- midgets, giants, conjoined twins -- recognize that he doesn't belong among them, and lend helping hands. Or flippers.

And because the universe is unspeakably cruel, this (admittedly streamlined) true story continues to the bittersweet end.

It's uncomfortable. But, as the uncomfortable becomes comfortable, it becomes uncomfortable to think that I felt uncomfortable in the first place.

124 minutes.