Elephant Man

The whole thing was on History Channel the other night. I saw it years ago and recall it a rather straight telling of the story. But upon watching a second time, I was awe struck. This might be the second straightest movie Lynch made (the other? The Straight Story) but it still has some dark and twisted moments. The term steampunk applies to dark victorian era technology and it obvious lynch was fascinated by the dark dirty tech of the era. One can only imagine the version he would make now, with the carte blanche he gets on project. The acting is superb and there are some great moments of restrained Victorian emotion. The moment Hopkin's wife finally beaks down during her first meeting with Merrick, culminates at a point in the movie after building toward it for over an hour, if you get to this point, and have a dry eye, well you just aren't human. Again I wish Lynch would embrace the DVD format and at least coment on some of this stuff, some many scenes I would lave to hear his take on. Parts of this movie reminded me of his contribution to the project i watched a year ago. a whole bunch of directors were given the original movie camera, made by the Lumiere Bros, perhaps around the same time as teh Elephant Man takes place. Lynch's contribution stand head and shoulders above all the others and is the only sequence you'll want to watch several times, if only to try and figure out how he did it. The man is a genius of film, simple as that.