third installment of the essay on David Lynch , and this time we will talk about The Elephant Man (The Elephant Man, 1980). Before we wrote on Blue Velvet (Blue Velvet, 1986) and the composition of the music of Twin Peaks (Love Theme ).
The Elephant Man can be labeled as a commercial work, conservative with respect to the narrative. It is an experimental film about the break-able to blend with surrealistic dreams realistic story, which David Lynch was shown, for example, Eraserhead (Cabeza Eraserhead, 1976) four years earlier. Of course, the manager protects, in some sequences, his taste for visual metaphors. So with the start of the film, when a furious elephant is superimposed on the screen to the cries of fear of a woman. This idea also serves as the pitchman, who serves as owner of John Merrick (the Elephant Man played by John Hurt ) - to explain the origin of the "monster" your mother was trampled by an elephant while she was pregnant.
The film presents a different human being, marked by an enormous and deformed head, which prevents John Merrick can speak it fluently and can lie down to sleep like a normal person, so it makes sense. In addition, his back has skin tumors that make your skin resembles that of an elephant. The story is based on a real case , documented, and had much impact on English society of late nineteenth century.
David Lynch directs a hard story, which steals the show in detail morbid deformities of the protagonist. Thus, the elephant man shows his face in the first 30 minutes of film. But that the director prefers to always point to the reaction that causes John Merrick in the audience who see it. It's a triple vision, as argued by critic Serge Daney : "Burlesque, modern and classical. More still, the fair, the hospital, the theater. "
With this idea, we can analyze what the director wants to convey with the film: John Merrick wants to be a normal man, not unlike the others, and this approach kills him, because the elephant man is different and should want to be different. For example, David Lynch includes images of workers working in factories who have experienced industrial revolution, there are machines that help but alienate and make all workers equal beings, without creativity. That prospect appears in other industrial projects of David Lynch, as the sawmill Twin Peaks. And that vision, in The Elephant Man, it's burlesque, it's fair showcasing John Merrick, it is very cruel.
The doctor, Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins ), cry the first time you've seen the Elephant Man. What makes scientific interest, for the challenge that presents itself in his career as a surgeon. So also falls into exhibitionism. Instead, the look of the theater is the only fair to John Merrick, which I applaud you for what it is: different. Because the curtain hiding the ordinary and shows the strange. And because the public wants to see. So, the actress Kendal (Anne Bancroft ) shows his admiration and interest, and accepts the Elephant Man without any doubt or look morbid.
Bibliography:-Serge Daney: "Le monstre a peur." Cahiers du cinema, No. 322, 1981
- "The Book of David Lynch." Great Directors Collection. Thierry Jousse.
- Photo 2: Thiago Piccoli ( Flickr )
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