The Elephant Man -- What Makes This Movie Great? (Episode 103)
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
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Disclaimer: All reasonable comments are welcome, including reasoned disagreements. You will be banned for foolish talk, harassment, and hate speech on sight; it's a tremendous waste of life. I believe in freedom of association and, by extension, freedom of dissociation from you.
The Elephant Man is a tremendous movie.
Beautifuly filmed with lovely cinematography, great acting all round, a well developed story that helps the viewer empathise with John Merrick.
A timeless classic that's lost none of it's appeal whatsoever.
Nice video 👍
His name is Joseph :)
@@juliahart8593
Thanks.
I remember at the start of the movie Anthony Hopkins' character says something like "Terrible things these machines...you can't reason with them", while operating on a man hideously injured by factory machinery. I always took that comment as a kind of precursor for some of the heartless 'machines' who appear later in the movie.
I absolutely love this movie. It definitely touched me in way not many films do.
They shot it in black and white because the makeup was more convincing/intriguing and less "grotesque" than if it had been in color.
I love this film. I love the way that Lynch shows London at the height of the industrial revolution, but in a totally surreal way. Hurts performance is a masterclass of acting, emoting such feeling under layers of make up. Lynch from all accounts was very intimidated by the cast of top British actors, he said he hardly knew how to direct them. But then realised all he had to do was block the scenes and point the camera. Mel Brooks produced the film and gave Lynch free reign to make the film how he wanted to. The result is Lynches most accessible film..
thank you
Should have won Oscar, Best Director & Best Movir
I loved this movie. I think this is one of Lynch's best films. Usually when everyone talks about Lynch, they talk about Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, and the show Twin Peaks. However, I think The Elephant Man is better than all of those (with the exception of Mulholland Drive). I think it really highlights Lynch's talents as a director that he is able to tell really compelling conventional narratives along with being able to produce more abstract/arthouse style films as well.
Elephant Man works on a popular level. Don't remember if I said this but I believe I can show this to anybody I know -- almost all of whom are non-cinephiles who just like standard fare -- and this movie will speak strongly to them. It bridges the gap between artsy surrealism and mainstream cinema. Too bad his Dune didn't do that.
It’s a profound movie and makes me cry every time I watch it.
this movie touched me and hit me deep in my soul, everyone should see this ❤️
Joseph.... dear poor Joseph... I hope he is at peace. I discussed it with my husband and we agreed on the name - if I ever have a son, I’m naming him after Joseph Carey Merrick. He’s beautiful.
that's remarkable. thank you.
"A friend of mine told me[Bill Hader], he saw Elephant Man in the theatre and there was a scene when Elephant Man's talking to the singer, woman, and it's [a] very sweet, gentle scene and she's like of looking at him like he's a human," Bill Hader told Eli Roth's History of Horror: Uncut.
He continued, "And she's saying 'it's so nice to meet you' and there's this quiet moment and the guy in the theatre went 'kill her Elephant Man,' noting, "Like, he was like 'this is a monster movie right?"
Very thought provoking talk regarding Lynch and this fascinating film. I will never forget seeing 'Eraserhead' for the first time and how much it impressed me - still does. 'The Straight Story' is another favourite with many 'Lynchist' visual effects and also very moving. Thanks and keep it up.
thank you.
I was privileged to have been working in the movie theater where it was playing. I got to see it many times on my brakes, one little piece of history about when John Merrick was working as a side show freak: he was working in the White Chapel District in and around the 1888, which was home to a true monster jack the ripper, who is committing a crime is around this time who knows maybe they both crossed paths.
Nice! One of my favs. All excellent performances particularly from the 2 leads. Always thought the doctor's realization, or at least questioning, of his own motives was handled well.. empathy is good theme for this movie. Great sound editing as always from Lynch
I didn't comment on it, but your Breakfast Club review was fun! Thanks Josh!
you're welcome. much appreciated comment here.
This movie scared the hell out of me as a child, but as an adult this movie breaks me.
Amazing movie. One of my forever favourites . RIP Mr Joseph Merrick.
I saw this movie when I was a kid back in the 80’s. It was the first movie I saw with a sad ending. I don’t believe it had any message to it since it was just simply the telling of a true story. I have seen all of David Lynch’s movies, and I think this one is his most simple and straightforward movie.
Ultimate Compassionate Movie💙🌍🙏
I got to see The Elephant Man in 1980 when it was first released. This is the kind of film best seen in a cinema setting. In those days celluloid was still the dominant format and has a certain texture that digital just cannot equal. The sound was overwhelming. David Lynch was (and still is) fascinated with factories and industrial technology. We see the horrors of an industrial accident in one gruesome scene. But the film does play rather freely with the reality of the story and the abuse depicted in the film is said never to happen and John Merrick was treated as well as possible and these scenes were created for dramatic purposes. I'm okay with this and have come to realise that anytime I see the words "based on a true story" it actually means that a lot was made up. In actuality the architecture of Merrick's jaw and mouth were so deformed that speech was difficult for him and equally tough on those trying to understand him. Lynch initially wanted to design the make-up but he eventually passed it off to a professional. He joked with John Hurt that to replicate the deformities accurately he would need to remove a substantial amount of the actor's jaw bone. I'll never forget when we get our first full view of John Merrick. It was horrifying and heartbreaking at the same time. The one scene that still moves me to tears is when Dr. Treves takes Merrick to meet his wife. She tries to keep a brave face but obviously overwhelmed by this man's afflictions. When he shows her a photograph of his mother and tells them how he must be a great disappointment to her, Treves' wife can no longer control herself and bursts into tears. We have no idea if this actually happened but it's a powerful scene. It deserved to win Oscars but that year Ordinary People swept many of the major awards.
I read somewhere that his (elephant man) mother was attacked or bull rushed by an elephant at a circus while she was pregnant with him. His family believed that the elephant was somehow imprinted on her/ him. I think that's what that elephant dream sequence is trying to portray in the movie.
yes, that is quite right.
Nice work on the movie! I really liked the social background of which you speak, and how different social classes interact with John Merrick.
I don't think it is meant to suggest certain classes of people act certain ways. Pretty much everyone in the movie aside from Teves treat John poorly upon first meeting, even the upper class. I think it is more meant to suggest that most people, no matter what social stature, have nasty biases towards others that can come from nothing more than a look.
@@jamesrobinson578 sorry for the lack of depth in my previous comment. Even though most people reject John when first meeting him, I believe there's a substantial difference in the way it is done by the upper and the lower classes. The first tend to moderate their reaction, while the latter seem to have no restriction to their reaction, showing us that you can put lipstick on a pig... but it still a pig.
Only film on TV that made my dad cry.
The movie is timeless. You only see Lynch's touches if you look for them.
I've watched it twice. The only thing that puts me off watching again is when Joseph regressed. It's very upsetting to watch.
It's an Incredible movie.
Really touched me ❤
yes!
Only two words necessary ... John Hurt!
A Mel Brooks Film. Yep. Look it up. And his wife, Ann Bankroft, was featured in the film. Brooks didn't want his reputation as a producer of comedies to overshadow the dramatic film.
yes, I believe his name is in the opening credits, or maybe the closing ones. (I recall them in there.)
@@LearningaboutMovies He played it down, nevertheless. For stated reasons.
Anthony Hopkins playing a sympathetic doctor. That isn't normal form for him.
indeed.
Its in black and white because Eraserhead was as well, and also because that makes it look like a film from that era.
This film is absolutely devastating ...
Lynch is my favourite director so glad to see you covering some of his work. I was quite underwhelmed by the Elephant Man. Its a well made movie but doesn't evoke emotion to the same extent as most of his other work.
It would be good to see you cover more of his work like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive. Inland Empire may be difficult to cover. His other works are fun but not as significant in my opinion.
Eraserhead is coming -- I think a video on that is to be released next month.
Lynch proving he can do more linear and less abstract work and STILL excel
yes! imagine him making Return of the Jedi.
This is Anthony Hopkins best role hands down
I honestly believe David Lynch is one of the greatest modern filmmakers, if perhaps a contender for the best. I’ve always been drawn to his strange work. In fact the first film I saw of his was Eraserhead and man was that one hell of a mistake. But even though I thought I didn’t like it, it stuck with me.
I’m drawn to films which embrace dreams, artifice and expressionism and he is able to do it in a way that is not cynical or pretentious.
In terms of my feelings towards the elephant man, I like it. It is a very moving film but I can’t say I think it is his best work.
I think he grew to make more interesting and complex pieces. This film just doesn’t feel like it’s fully his and so I must say it doesn’t fully satisfy my Lynch cravings.
I will admit some of his later films also don’t do it for me. But they are more ambitious and complex and carry concepts that are more common in Lynch’s work(which you don’t see in this movie), that being how films affect us, the connection between dreams and films and the inability to escape our primal urges(and in turn how these connect to filmmaking), as well as how film affects our identity’s. I don’t know, really there’s too many things in a Lynch film so just scratch what I said, it’s a pretty reductive view.
So I think his best works manage to balance complexity, his penchant for dream logic and over the top satirical tone.
I’d say his most satisfying works are Blue Velvet and all the Twin Peaks stuff(that he had control over).
Mulholland drive is difficult to connect to, but I still like it. It really is his richest work. But at once I think it lacks Lynch’s heart and charm. I think I need to see it more.
thank you very much.
Hilarious that Hurt lost the oscar to Robert DeNiro, who was playing Robert DeNiro!
"Tis true my form is something odd, but blaming me is blaming God. Could I create myself anew, I would not fail in pleasing you. If I could reach from pole to pole or grasp the ocean with a span, I would be measured by the soul; the mind's the standard of the man"
I watched this movie with my dogs and they would look away and whimper when merrick would get abused
Great movie
Even tho he has terrible deformity, at the end of the day. He’s still human
Different movie monsters, a big delay before actually introduced, so we value him from this delayed introduction (we see people vilify him too)
... I had to laugh when you asked whether the Elephant Man was still any good :-)
By the way, I'm having a great time going through your videos on movies I've seen.
I wanted to see this movie, but alas, it is not free on UA-cam
Still have not seen this film. I did see it performed as a play in Los Angeles in the 1970s. I feel Lynch's most outstanding films are: "Blue Velvet", "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive" "Inland Empire" seems to be the strangest of all.
thanks, I hope to see the play some day.
Wow! My favorite from Lynch
great!
Owned this movie for years and never watched it! Might be time after watching this video!
do it!
No, actually I don’t think he was BORN with any deformity at all? I heard they all developed starting from the age of two perhaps? Correct me if I’m wrong!
This is my least-favorite of Lynch's films, but I still like it. My main criticism is how overly sentimental it is. I'm thinking specifically of the scene where Merrick meets Treves's wife, and she's so demonstrably kind to him that he bursts into tears. There are a few scenes like that in the film, and they strike me as melodramatic, as though Lynch wasn't sure how to endear us to Merrick, so he fell back on easy sentimentality. Besides that, though, the cinematography is really unique, and you get a strong sense of how grimy and unpleasant certain places are. Sometimes people mistake deformities and impairments as good acting (still not amazed by Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Revenant"), but Hurt succeeds in moving past the prosthetics (just as Merrick himself moved past his deformity) to demonstrate Merrick as an intelligent, purposeful man who desires those simplest things we all do: to be accepted and loved.
The ending is the best part of this film. Before watching it, I read somewhere that the composer didn't want to use "Adagio for Strings" in that last sequence, as he (rightly) predicted that it would end up overused, and while it did, it still works in this film, as it's not used to score some grand, dramatic scene (as in "Platoon"), but something very subtle, which makes it the most affecting part of the whole film. In fact, despite Lynch's reputation as a dweller solely in the weird and surreal, much of his work demonstrates this ability to generate true feeling and empathy for his characters. He still sometimes lays it on too thick (a couple of scenes in "Blue Velvet"), but "The Straight Story" is nearly perfect in understating the strong themes of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice in telling the story as a matter-of-fact road film. It has one of the greatest endings I've ever seen, as does "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me," which spends almost its entire run exposing you to the misery of a young girl, then turns that suffering into something beautiful and redemptive.
I read both of those reviews, and I agree with a lot of what Ebert wrote, although he seems hastily dismissive--most of his reviews are at least twice as long as that, and he's typically pretty generous in saying what works for movies he didn't like, unless he absolutely hates them, which he didn't here. I do respect him a lot as a film critic. Even when I disagreed with him, I still saw that in his writing, he not only wanted to give us his opinion, but also to show us how to think about movies so that we could think, speak, and write intelligently about them ourselves. He gives great advice for reviewing films: always be subjective. This is your opinion, and you can't speak for the average filmgoer because you can't know what they're going to think, but you know what you think, and while people will disagree with you, you at least contribute something to the wide variety of opinion about a film, which inspires discussion and encourages people to think deeper about a film.
great comment. thank you. I have not found Ebert's reviews up through about 1981 not all that helpful. coincidentally or not, that's when his alcoholism was raging until he started regularly going to AA meetings at about that time.
3rd saddest film I’ve ever seen top 20 favorite films
The movie was nominated for several Oscars; it didn't win any of them.
To be fair it was up against Raging Bull.
@@GiffTunes At the same time, Raging Bull only won two Oscars, so I wouldn't say that that film was its major competition (except, obviously, in the acting and editing department; let's face it, the makeup gave John Hurt 3/4 his performance, which is not belittling his performance, since I'm sure that makeup was hell to deal with; and Raging Bull's editing is incredible).