“I am not an animal! I am a human being!” Even if you haven’t seen The Elephant Man, you know that line. It’s been quoted, parodied, and included in montages of great Hollywood moments. Though John Hurt uttered that anguished cry, David Lynch conceived the scene. When the legendary artist died last week, his second feature was the one I grabbed from my shelf.
For those who don’t understand why so many mourn him, the 1980 film has the blueprint of the elements that ran through most of his later work. Only one film is more accessible, the G-rated Disney release The Straight Story. While that film definitely held Lynch’s heart, The Elephant Man is closer to his lifelong conversation with his artistic soul.
Though based on a true story, the film plays more with the myths about Joseph Merrick than the reality. They even got his name wrong, but maybe that’s appropriate. Calling him John places this in another of Lynch’s alternate worlds. It may look like ours from time to time, and it may be truthful, but it isn’t what happened.
Shot in black and white, it’s also a mix of hallucination and old-fashioned storytelling. Opening and closing on dream-like shots of Merrick’s mother, Lynch frames them in ways that he would repeat in later work. But he also holds scenes just a little too long, allowing silence to linger along with the occasional single tear in a close-up. Let’s correct that about the silence — in many of Lynch’s films, the sound design includes a constant low thrumming. Industry never allows for real silence.
Though star John Hurt clearly did not consider this a monster movie, Lynch borrows liberally from the Universal Monster classics to bring those films’ subtext to the fore. Sometimes he’s as heavy-handed as Boris Karloff’s massive paw in Frankenstein. But that means no one can escape Merrick’s essential humanity. If Anthony Hopkins’ Frederick Treves has not one, not two, but three epiphanies that he may not be any better than carnival barker Bytes (Freddie Jones), it’s so we all get the message.
Call it an anti-monster movie monster movie. In later films Lynch would deal more with normal people who hid monsters inside them. Those hold more exploration of grey. The Elephant Man is, appropriately, black and white. Though sad, it offers hope. People often miss that element in Lynch’s later films; it’s there, but Lynch also knows that darkness will keep coming for us.
Yet as he memorably included in Eraserhead, in Heaven, everything is fine. If we’re willing to see the good, if we’re willing to hold on to the good, and if we’re willing to work to be better. Because heaven just means we’re all kind to each other — a word that Merrick uses often to describe the people he meets after Treves rescues him from the freak show.
Start here in Lynch’s filmography and work your way around to his more challenging films. At their heart, there’s that plea: be kind.
As 2025 feels like it’s thrown its full force into just three weeks, remember that. Be kind. We are all human beings, and it’s best we remember that.
Note: Originally I was holding these thoughts back for an appearance on Matinee Heroes, but it turns out that no streaming service has The Elephant Man available. The version I watched was the Criteron Blu-ray that I’d bought after John Hurt passed away.
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