THE MASTERPIECE
The Elephant Man
We reassess the greatest films of all time, one film at a time
Centre stage: John Hurt as John Merrick, aka The Elephant Man.
Alamy, Getty Images, MPTV
HALFWAY THROUGH The Elephant Man, John Merrick has a dream. As he sleeps, restlessly scratching away at fabric, we travel through the eyehole in his hooded mask, and then along some greasy industrial piping, elephants trumpeting while we see Merrick’s mother writhing in agony. Shirtless men toil away at heavy-duty machinery, smoke billowing, before Merrick’s own disembodied head veers towards us and then, finally, we find him on the ground, kicked to bits by aggressors. It’s one of a handful of surreal sequences that elevate The Elephant Man, making it even more transcendent than it already is, lodging it in your soul forever.
The Straight Story aside (although that is about an old man who crosses America in a lawnmower), The Elephant Man is David Lynch’s most traditional film, yet still so obviously his work. Its trippier sequences are absolutely of a piece with the rest of it, a tender study of humanity, dignity, exploitation, transaction and, most of all, love. It didn’t originate with Lynch — the screenplay had been written by two young writers, Christopher De Vore and Eric Bergren — but he poured his whole self into it.