The Elephant Man (1980)

I watched The Elephant Man as a kid and haven't watched it sense. Despite some sections that end up much too sentimental than they need to be, the film turned out a much more interesting experience than I expected. Victorian-era London may be a surprising choice of movie setting for David Lynch, but I must say he evokes a place that one still recognizes as Lynch's territory. I've read that the film may stray from the real story about the elephant man, who apparently was indeed working at a sideshow, but was not treated nearly as badly as he is in the movie. But as I see it, Lynch's movie is not primarily about the elephant man as a particular person. He focuses more on the society that breeds interest and curiosity for the unusual, the monstrous, the extravagant. I'm not saying that Lynch was making a deep Foucaldian analysis of power and the Gaze, but what I liked about the movie is how he makes connection between the world of seedy sideshows, the clinical hospital and the bourgeois salon - as places where things are on display, whereas other things remain hidden, but where a special Gaze is always directed at some sort of secret, whether it is a scientifically obscure syndrome that is to be brought to the light or whether it is the strange and elusive creature attracting the circus audience. My take on the movie is that this is not so much a tale revolving around the courageous life of John Merrick but that it is an investigation about what it means to "enter society" and on what conditions one does it. - - But some of the sentimental images in the movie (OK they exist in abundance, I must admit) spoil this approach, and make it a quite conventional story in which we are to admire how this man that is first presented as a freak and a monster turns out to be an eloquent man about town, charming ladies and quoting the Bible. (Still, one could read this as a portrayal of the ideal entrance into Victorian society.)