The Elephant Man is a profoundly moral film based upon the life of Joseph Merrick, 1862 - 1890. Merrick was born seriously deformed in Leicester, England, and after a few years in a workhouse, began to be exhibited as a freak called The Elephant Man. He was visited by Dr. Frederick Treves, a physician from the London Hospital, who had Merrick examined and photographed. After the shop that had exhibited him in London was closed by the police, he was exhibited throughout Europe before being robbed by his manager and making his way back to London. Although his condition was incurable, he was allowed to stay at London Hospital for the rest of his life, dying at the age of 27 of asphyxia from attempting to sleep lying down.
Director David Lynch, working from a screenplay based upon a book by Dr. Treves himself, takes modest artistic liberties with the history of Joseph Merrick (called John in the film after the error propagated by Treves). Central to the film is the painstakingly accurate prosthetic makeup by Christopher Tucker, who worked from a plaster death cast from the London Hospital, as well as from period photographs, to completely transform actor John Hurt into Joseph Merrick.
The film was shot in black and white, in part because it contributed to the period feel, and in part because Merrick's grotesque appearance might seem repulsive in color, while the viewer is fascinated by it in black and white.
The films opens with a montage of photographs of Merrick's mother and slowly moving elephants, visually previewing the carnival talker's tale of the Elephant Man's origin: his mother was thrown down by an elephant in the fourth month of her maternal condition, the shock creating his deformities. The opening sequence evokes Lynch's remarkable film Eraserhead, with clouds of steam and clanking machinery.
We see Treves (Anthony Hopkins) walking through a carnival, where he observes police entering a freak show. He follows them in, walking past bearded ladies, dwarfs, and other human marvels before seeing a couple exiting a portion of the exhibit, the woman sobbing. The police drive Treves and the others away, and close the portion of the exhibition containing the Elephant Man. We see his "owner," Bytes (Freddie Jones), unsuccessfully argue his case before the police before being shut down.
Next we see Treves at work in London Hospital, operating on the victim of a machine accident. A boy interrupts the surgery to to tell Treves, "I found it." Treves walks through a rough part of town to find Bytes and his "treasure." Bytes gives his bally pitch to an audience of one before drawing the curtain to reveal Merrick to Treves. Treves is stunned, as are we, as Bytes commands Merrick to stand up and turn around, and we get our first look at the terrible Elephant Man. The camera cuts back to Treves who stands in shock, a single tear running down his face.
Treves arranges for Merrick to be delivered to London Hospital, where he is examined by Treves and exhibited to surgeons as part of an anatomy lecture. During the examination and exhibition, Merrick never speaks, and all assume that he is mentally defective as well. When he is returned to Bytes after several days, Bytes beats him savagely. Bytes' Boy (Dexter Fletcher) runs for help to Treves, and Treves takes Merrick to London Hospital to care for him.
Treves places Merrick in the isolation ward and begins his care. He is immediately taken to task by the Director of the London Hospital, Carr Gomm (Sir John Gielgud) for taking in an incurable. Treves slowly begins to win Merrick's trust, as we hear Merrick speak for the first time. Treves carefully coaches him for a conversation with the hospital director.
Treves encounters Bytes in the hospital, who demands to get his man back. "All you do is profit from another man's misery," Treves says.
"You think you're better than me?" Bytes asks. "You wanted the freak to show to those doctor chums of yours to make a name for yourself."
Carr Gomm appears as Bytes threatens to go to the authorities; Car Gomm dares him. As Bytes leaves, Carr Gomm asks to meet Merrick the next afternoon.
The meeting of Merrick and Carr Gomm goes stiffly when Merrick, who is very nervous, cannot speak extemporaneously. Carr Gomm leaves, with Treves following, as Carr Gomm congratulates him on his brave attempt to coach Merrick to speak words he has been taught. Through the closed door, Treves hears Merrick reciting the 23rd Psalm, including a part that Treves has not taught him. Treves and Carr Gomm burst in to hear the end of the psalm, as Merrick speaks spontaneously for the first time.
Soon Merrick is the talk of London, as letters describing his refined mind are published in the newspapers. Mrs. Kendel (Anne Bancroft), a famous actress, reads these accounts with interest and resolves to meet Merrick.
A night porter (Michael Elphick) discovers Merrick in the hospital, and takes to leading groups of drunken revelers to see the freak. Strangely, Merrick never tells Treves of these visitations.
In one of the film's most powerful sequences, Treves invites Merrick to his home for tea to meet his wife Anne (Hannah Gordon). Treves is initially overwhelmed at being treated kindly by a beautiful woman, but settles bravely into polite conversation over tea. Then it is Anne's turn to be overwhelmed when Merrick shows her a photograph of his mother, who is beautiful. Merrick says that he is sure that he must have been quite a disappointment to her, but Anne reassures him that no mother could be disappointed in so loving a son. Merrick wishes that his mother could see him now, among such lovely friends, and that then it might be possible for her to love him as he is. Anne breaks down sobbing, overwhelmed by the isolation that Merrick's condition has caused.
Merrick takes to decorating his room at the hospital, and undertakes the building of a paper model of a cathedral. One day his is visited by the famous actress Mrs. Kendel, who is utterly charming. Treves leaves them alone, as Mrs. Kendel presents him with an autographed portrait of herself and a volume of Shakespeare. Merrick begins to read a scene from Romeo and Juliet, which of course Mrs. Kendel knows, and the two enact the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet, ending in a kiss, easily the strangest cinematic kiss or enactment of Shakespeare ever seen. She learns that Merrick has never been to the theater, and encourages him to attend.
Mrs. Kendel's visit becomes news, and Merrick receives other visitors from London society, eager to follow Mrs. Kendel's example. Head Nurse Mothershead (Wendy Hiller) confronts Treves, telling him that she thinks he's just being stared at all over again.
Treves has a moment of reflection late at night. As his wife finds him sitting alone in their parlor, it is clear that the words of Bytes haunt him. He says that he has made Merrick into a curiosity all over again. Anne reassures him that he has given Merrick a good life.
There is a tense meeting of the board of the London Hospital as the issue of Merrick's residence there is about to come up for a vote. The board is visited by Her Royal Highness Alexandria, Princess of Wales (Helen Ryan), who bears a letter from the Queen commending London Hospital on their care of Merrick. The Board votes to allow him to live there permanently.
Soon after, the night porter returns with another group of patrons, including Bytes. Merrick is kidnapped. We see him exhibited at a carnival in France. He is clearly in ill health and can barely stand for the exhibition. At night, Bytes, very drunk, drags him off to sleep in an animal cage. The other freaks get together to release him and set him off back to London. There is a tense scene as he is caught in a crowd in London, who pull off the hood that he wears over his head in public. He cries out, "I am not an animal! I am a human being!"
Once back at London Hospital, he is dressed up in white tie for his first trip to the theater. He sits in a private box to watch a Victorian pantomime. At the close of the performance, Mrs. Kendel steps out in front of the curtain to dedicate the night's performance to Merrick, who rises to acknowledge the audience and receives a standing ovation.
That night, he once again contemplates one of the pictures on his wall, of someone lying in bed sleeping. He has expressed the wish that he could sleep lying down like a normal person, which he is unable to do. On this night, clearly the best of his life, he lies down like a normal person, and dies.
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| Photographs of Joseph Merrick. | |
This is a period film, and the biology presented is the biology of the Victorian era. When Treves exhibits Merrick to the surgeons, he describes the anatomical findings precisely. As the story takes place before the rediscovery of Mendel, there is no genetics whatsoever in the film. However, the portrayal of Merrick is as accurate as possible, down to the peculiarities of his speech. For this reason, we give the film five flasks.
The cause of Joseph Merrick's condition has been a subject of some controversy over the decades. For most of the twentieth century, his condition was ascribed to neurofibromatosis. This does not explain Merrick's skeletal deformities, which are asymmetric, with parts of his body apparently normal. Merrick also did not exhibit café au lait spots on the skin, a characteristic feature of neurofibromatosis. Later, Merrick's condition was ascribed to the much rarer Proteus Syndrome, which affects bone and skin as well as nerves. All patients with Proteus Syndrome are genetic mosaics; presumably, the presence of the mutation in all cells makes embryonic development impossible. Others have speculated that Merrick suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis and Proteus Syndrome. DNA tests done in 2003 were inconclusive. Please see the references below for more details.
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The Elephant Man is a powerful film with a visionary director, an extraordinary cast, and a moving story. Like other true works of art, it explores many complex questions without giving us the answers.
How can a profoundly deformed person, viewed as a monstrosity by most people of his day, find dignity as a human being? How can a physician provide compassionate care for this person even while becoming famous for exhibiting him? How can we build a society capable of looking past this man's appearance to see his character?
We see the full range of responses to Merrick's appearance. The first response we see is a woman sobbing as she exits the carnival show. Exhibitions of freaks were a popular entertainment in the Victorian era, but Merrick is not a cheerful dwarf, a jolly fat lady, or a marvelous giant. He is proof that we cannot understand the will of God. "Let No Man Mock What God Hath Wrought," was a popular inscription at sideshow exhibitions. There is no possibility of understanding such a departure from the plan of man made in God's image, unless we accept that the image of God's spirit was used to fashion the human spirit, which blossoms in Merrick over the course of the film.
Early in the film, we see Treves operating on the victim of a machine accident. He laments that it is impossible to reason with machines. This would include the machinery that guides human development, which has mangled Merrick far beyond the surgical patient that Treves is treating. When Treves finally sees Merrick, he is shocked into utter immobility and cries a single tear. He falls into the prejudice of his day, and assumes that there can be no normal mind contained in Merrick's frame. When he and Carr Gomm discover that Merrick can read and speak, they are overwhelmed, unable to image what existence has been like for Merrick.
Viewers who have selected this film because they want to stare at monsters will not be disappointed. Even as we come to accept Merrick's humanity, we are shown the worst of what our kind has to offer. Bytes, Merrick's "owner," who has made a living exhibiting him, is a brutal, abusive drunk. Towards the end of the film, we see the audience in France overcome their shock at Merrick's appearance to feel disgust at the way Bytes is treating a deformed man who is obviously unhealthy.
The night porter who gathers drunken Londoners for private showings of Merrick in his hospital room offers another dark look into the heart of humanity. We can almost accept that he is profiting from exhibiting Merrick; indeed, the benevolent Treves also does so. We get to see the night porter's cruelty as he offers his patrons the ultimate thrill: tormenting the helpless Merrick by showing him his own face in a mirror, upon which Merrick screams and the crowd laughs. The porter and his friends stage their own inadvertent reflection of the tender Romeo and Juliet scene as they force a drunken whore to kiss Merrick and laugh at the shock and horror experienced by both parties. They pour liquor over Merrick, who is having difficulty breathing, and lift him in the air to spin him around, reveling in his pain.
This is in contrast to the courage shown by Mrs. Treves as she overcomes her shock to treat Merrick as a guest in her home for tea. She struggles to rise to the occasion, and triumphs. The performance is easier for the actress, Mrs. Kendel, who comes from the world of romance and illusion. As a bright light of society, Mrs. Kendel leads the way for Londoners to accept Merrick. One couple struggles to meet Mrs. Kendel's level of acceptance on a visit to Merrick in his hospital room, but by the end of the film, an entire theater audience rises to its feet to applaud Merrick as Mrs. Kendel salutes him as her friend.
For repeatedly asking us to look past our fear and revulsion to embrace John Merrick's humanity, we give this film five hearts.
1. OMIM entry on neurofibromatosis, type I.
2. OMIM entry on Proteus Syndrome.
3. External reviews of The Elephant Man at IMDb.