Fredrick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), a surgeon at London Hospital, visits the local carnival one day to find a most curious show on display.  A man, Bytes (Freddie Jones), has enslaved this man and put him on display as a monster.  Treves takes this Elephant Man into his care and brings him back to health, not just physically but mentally.  We soon learn that this man isn’t an animal at all, but a man whose name is John Merrick (John Hurt) and is a lot more intellectually capable than we imagined he would be.  The film follows the progression of Merrick and his friendship with Treves.

What’s surprised me is how this film is pretty much devoid of all the odd psychological imagery that I’ve seen so far in my Lynch viewings.  I know that unlike all the other David Lynch films I’m going to be seeing this is a biopic and based on fact.  So this is very interesting to me, seeing Lynch take basically a documentary style perspective to his story.  Even though I must admit that I was worried that in the beginning of the film when we get a short tale of how John Merrick came to be deformed I was worried that I was about to get an ‘elephant rape’ scene; but in the end I was just jumping to weird conclusions because of the reputation of the filmmaker.

There are many stories of people being misunderstood, exploited and abused because of how they differ for the norm and this is no different.  When one is not able to work in a regular job setting – i.e. a factory or whatnot – then one is left with little choice.  John Merrick I imagine began life, while deformed, loved.  It’s just unfortunate that due to his circumstances he ended up in the care of a man as horrible as Bytes.  The truth of the matter is that no matter how horrible an idea that Bytes’ use of Merrick was he still loved him.  He did love Merrick like how a man loves his work horse, but it was still love.  Which is why when we get around to Merrick being Treves’ patient in the hospital we start to critique Treves’ reasons for having him around.  Does Treves keep Merrick in the hospital for Merrick’s benefit or his own?  Even though towards the end actions speak louder than words we still leave ourselves with a niggling feeling that there was a bit of selfishness in Treves’ actions.

The film is good, but doesn’t make it into my favourite category mainly because of how normal it presents itself.  It’s a good story and filled with brilliant acting from John Hurt as well as Anthony Hopkins.  Definitely best as an introduction to the world of David Lynch since it’s the least messed with narrative and allows you to get a glimpse into the mind of Lynch.

IMDB says 8.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 91%

I say 6.0/10