Here’s a statement I haven’t made abundantly clear several times before: I utterly admire David Lynch. I admire how he is one of the most important filmmakers to ever live, how he helped define both surrealism and independent cinema, and how he has been a cinematic iconoclast who has broken boundaries for what is possible in filmmaking. Perhaps what I admire the most about David Lynch is his unabashed dedication to his craft, and his ability to take risks. It was only through his singular artistic vision and decision to take risks that we’ve come to respect and celebrate Lynch as one of our greatest living filmmakers. Yet, perhaps the riskiest decision David Lynch ever made was that he decided to make a conventional film. Of course, his most conventional film (The Straight Story) is a matter for another day completely, I want to focus on one of Lynch’s most unique films, The Elephant Man, and celebrate it as an underrated masterpiece that it is.

For his sophomore feature film (after the bizarre and shocking and utterly hypnotizing Eraserhead), Lynch was brought on to direct an adaptation of a script that was making its way around Hollywood and found its way to the desk and into the heart of the extraordinary Mel Brooks. The idea of Mel Brooks making a straightforward British period drama seemed to make as much sense as David Lynch making a straightforward British period drama. However, this strange combination of artist and story resulted in a film partnership that was a career highlight for both men, who went on to make quite an impressive film. It also stands to reason that The Elephant Man would be an outlier in the careers of both Brooks and Lynch, as they never returned to this kind of film, or something quite similar, again in their careers (with the exception of Frances, a similarly-themed biopic about the tragic life of a historical figure, which Brooks also produced but insisted on remaining uncredited) – and I’d argue that The Elephant Man is a film that resonates precisely because of how it approaches the subject matter, which is not something particularly simple to execute.

The approach Lynch and the crew took to this film was remarkable, simply because The Elephant Man is a film that would even remain nearly impossible to make in the present day, so the fact that this film was made almost four decades ago, when it was far more difficult to approach difficult subjects like this, is nothing short of a combination of miraculous luck and the incredible artistic prowess behind this film. The Elephant Man is a film that was always going to be a bit troubling because this was a film that was not attempting to be in the same category of films like Freaks or the myriad of films that tried to imitate the shocking yet alluring nature of Tod Browning’s masterpiece. The Elephant Man was a film that attempted to show the life of a man so terribly deformed and rejected by society, yet it needed to navigate the fine line between showing the exploitation and rejection of this man by Victorian audiences who paid to see him, without placing the cinematic audience in the same position, presenting Merrick as something that we should too gawk at and be repulsed by. I am not sure how this film managed to avoid that entirely, and even from his first appearance on screen, the audience is not repulsed, but rather immediately are able to empathize with this tragic figure. There is a multitude of possible reasons why this film managed to present this story in a way that wasn’t exploitative but also shocking in ways that were necessary to the story.

One possible reason is that David Lynch is a director who has built his career out of many different factors – his remarkable imagery, his unique stories and his tremendous ability to make such utterly weird films. Yet, he is also a director known for his cinematic integrity – out of all of his films, he has never once taken a proverbial “cheap shot” – there has not been a single moment in one of his films that were not supposed to be there, or felt tacked on in order to service the story or direct the plot in a way that it could not possibly go towards without some sort of unrealistic intervention. Lynch is an outsider of cinema himself, and thus it would make sense that he would ensure that the film he made would be about Joseph Merrick, not a freak known as “The Elephant Man”, but a human being who was capable to showing his tremendous charm, intelligence and good-hearted nature to the rest of the world. The tenderness in which Lynch approached Merrick’s story was actually surprising, and while I never expected Lynch to unnecessarily exploit the story for shock value, I didn’t ever think that this film would be so touching and genuinely kindhearted in its approach to the subject matter. That isn’t to say it isn’t a horrifying and unsettling film at times (but for reasons that are not quite obvious, which I’ll comment on soon enough), but it has the heart and soul behind it to make it a warm and endearing (and ultimately heartbreaking) film.

Perhaps another reason is the high-profile cast that was drawn towards this film. Anthony Hopkins (who I am pretty sure everyone respects, if not utterly adores) plays Frederick Treves, the surgeon who encounters Merrick at a freakshow and removes him from that toxic environment and moves him to the London Hospital, where his presence is not particularly welcomed, such as by Mr. Carr Gomm (Sir John Gielgud), but as the members of London’s upper society, such as Madge Kendal (Anne Bancroft) come to realize that there is someone genuinely good behind the ghastly deformity, he slowly becomes more accepted – yet, there is always the spectre of the common man looking for shock and awe lurking just beyond. Hopkins is such a fantastic actor, and here he takes a relatively subdued, but no less impressive, approach to a character. Treves, in all honesty, is a thankless role, as this is a film focused almost solely on Merrick. However, Hopkins is so wonderful in the role, alternating between the callous surgeon and medical researcher, to a genuinely empathetic man who feels nothing about respect and admiration for the unfortunately-fated Merrick. Hopkins is always tremendous, and while this may not be a defining moment in his career, it is certainly a great one. The same can be said for John Gielgud (who is naturally great in his role as the stuffy Mr. Carr Gomm), and Anne Bancroft, in a very small but still tremendous performance.

Yet, this film begins and ends with John Hurt. One can never run out of opportunities to praise and exalt John Hurt, so I will be unabashedly doing just that. Hurt was, without any doubt, one of the finest actors to ever live, and the rare kind of actor that managed to remain consistently excellent without ever being overexposed – he had the same fame and recognizability as his recognizability, but without the burden of being a widely-known household name – and to be fair, his performance in The Elephant Man did not help the case for fame. Hurt is unrecognizable as Merrick, hidden behind elaborate prosthetics that are both shocking and awe-inspiring in equal measure. His physicality of the performance is one of the greatest examples of non-verbal acting I’ve ever seen – yet, his performance is far more than just the appearance of the character (which is often the case with these kinds of films based around transformative performances from their actors). Hurt finds the true humanity in this character, showing his insecurities and vulnerabilities, and he manages to convey the true emotional complexities of the character. While Christopher Tucker did astonishing work in crafting the appearance of Merrick, Hurt deserves even more credit for reaching below the prosthetics and finding the inherent beauty that existed within this man. I’m not one to reference the Academy Awards, but I feel it was said best when Hurt was nominated (but sadly did not win) for Best Actor, with “a role that combines the ugliest of exteriors with the gentlest of souls” – and I feel like this provides adequate definition of what makes this film so extremely special – Hurt’s relentlessly beautiful and heartfelt performance, and stands as one of the iconic and brilliant actor’s finest hours ever committed to film.

Could it ever be possible to say that David Lynch does not make a visually-stunning film? I have yet to see a single film where Lynch does not craft something extraordinarily special in terms of aesthetics. Shooting on genuine black-and-white film, Lynch and cinematographer Freddie Francis (who lensed some distinctive masterpieces throughout his wonderful career) create something so deeply distinctive and visually stunning. The Victorian era has rarely ever looked so beautifully bleak, and the slightly more cold and clinical visual nature of the film makes the journey into empathy we feel towards Merrick so much more fulfilling. It is a film that also uses the “less is more” principle, and keeps everything straightforward and simple, as to not complicate the story or distract from the central message, with production design and costuming being appropriate and visually-pleasing without being the focal point. Lynch has always been very attentive regarding visuals (even when, such as in the case of Twin Peaks, when the nature of the project calls for the occasional foray into bland and unremarkable territory to serve the story – don’t hate me for this, Twin Peaks is wonderful, there were just some instances where the simplicity of the filmmaking was appropriate for the story).

The empathy in this film is truly something to behold, but it doesn’t come easily. As I mentioned previously, this is a film that has the difficult task of navigating a fine-line between being moving and being exploitative – and I mean that in terms of both the subject matter and the audience themselves. This is a film that manages to be moving without being falsely sentimental, and it never shows Merrick’s plight as anything other than truthful and honest. There isn’t any need to manipulate the audience to feel something that isn’t necessary, and The Elephant Man uses its minimalistic sensibilities to allow the audience to construct their own relationship with Merrick, never forcing any sentiment on us at all. In terms of the subject matter, I’ve alluded to the tenderness this film approaches its story with, and while the audience may be slightly taken aback by Merrick’s first appearance on screen, those feelings become far less jarring as we start to see what a gentle and warm person Merrick actually is. The Elephant Man manages to be shocking in the subversive way that only a Lynch film can be – by making out normality and conventional behavior to be the truly shocking aspect of the film. Throughout the film, we come to see the gawking, hyper-curious people as the true freaks, unable to look beyond the surface level to find the humanity within. Yet, even with that, it is a message that is not overtly stated and remains a minor theme in the exploration of this truly tragic man.

The Elephant Man is an incredible film and one that touches on the story of a remarkable but ultimately deeply heartbreaking story. It is a film that approaches its subject with such love and tenderness, and never resorts to manipulation of the audience, nor exploitation of the subject for the sake of shocking the audience. John Hurt is absolutely astonishing as John Merrick, and Anthony Hopkins is fantastic as well. More importantly, The Elephant Man proves that David Lynch can move away from his well-known comfort zone of surreal and psychologically disturbing cinema to make something conventional (yet not entirely without some unsettling moments scattered throughout). This is a truly magnificent achievement of a film, and it serves to be something truly special in a vast number of ways.