One of the most guilt-free tearjerkers ever made. You should feel more guilty if you DON’T cry at least once at this telling of the story of John Merrick (actually his name in real life was Joseph Merrick), the outrageously deformed Englishman in the late 1800s who was shut out of anything that resembled a normal life, but somehow became a fashionable figure in London high society before he died at a young age. It’s a story so heartbreaking and so full of challenges–notably, one of its leads is buried under heavy prosthetics the entire time–that this film’s eye-filling greatness feels like nothing less than a miracle.
But it wasn’t a miracle. It was largely due to the inspired decision to bring in a young David Lynch to direct.
(The story goes that producer Mel Brooks arranged a private screening of Eraserhead, Lynch’s only feature at the time, and then came out exclaiming to him, “You’re a madman! You’re hired!”)
It’s a film that walks the line between grotesque and beautiful, mixing them up and often blurring the distinction until, even forty years later, it still feels unlike anything else you’ve seen. It nails that dream-like feeling that Lynch always goes after.
His vision of the grimy side of old London is not far removed from the bombed-out landscape of Eraserhead. When Dr. Fredrick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) seeks out Merrick (John Hurt) early in the film (out of curiosity, like many Lynch heroes; he never stops to explain himself to us or anyone else), it feels like a descent into a deep, dark, strange place. Dangerous streets and alleys, knocks on creaky doors, parting of filthy curtains. Shadows galore. The constant hiss of steam and drip-drops of water. Lynch indulges in his fascination for industrial textures and sounds and through that makes a film that transcends every cliche about its setting. It’s its own world, a new standard.
Its incidental characters are often outrageous. The women fighting in the hospital lobby with blood flowing down their faces in ugly rivulets that suggest that they’ve both scratched each other to hell. The scum-of-the-earth barflys who pay the hospital porter for “admission” to Merrick’s hospital room so they can gawk. (The guy who gets turned on by his woman’s revulsion for Merrick is particularly disturbing.)
Also, the bad guys are pure nasty in that David Lynch way. He doesn’t go for sympathetic heavies who have dimension or glimmers of humanity. No, a Lynch villain is almost always a raw and terrifying concentration of everything that’s wrong with the world. They’re predatory beasts without a drop of goodness in them. They can’t be reasoned with any more than you can reason with a hurricane. The hero is often in over his head when dealing with him. The hero is overwhelmed, his weaknesses exposed for all to see. He can’t stand up to him in the usual ways.
Maybe he can’t stand up to him at all, as is this case here. The frail Merrick, who can barely walk steadily or hold his head upright, instantly recoils in fear at the sight of his “owner”, Bytes (Freddie Jones), an alcoholic slob who scrapes out a living on the freak show circuit putting Merrick on display and controlling him through beatings. Bytes and Frank Booth should hang out.
Meanwhile, Merrick’s deformity is no big deal to Lynch’s camera. It’s only another interesting texture, really. For impact, he focuses on other peoples’ reactions to it. The good doctor crying, from sadness, at the first sight of him. The hysterical trauma of nurses and unprepared onlookers. They’re shocked, but Lynch doesn’t want US to be shocked. Merrick is not a monster. He’s just a poor guy suffering through God’s cruel joke.
When Lynch hangs back from Merrick at the beginning, giving us only quick views. it’s out of respect and empathy. At that point, he’s a freak show attraction. This guy lives a life of exploitation and this film refuses to treat him like that. It respects his privacy.
It’s that empathy that carries us along here. Merrick has never been inside of a nice house or gone to the theatre or had a friend or had a woman be kind to him. So when these things happen, they’re HUGE events for him. They make him cry. They make the others around him cry. They make ME cry. Everything about the “normal” world is new. He’s a fresh and wholly innocent pair of eyes, scared to death at first, but taking it all in. He notices everything. Maybe he’s not always perfectly articulate. The emotions can be too much to handle. He’s all eyes and ears and not much of a mouth.
Sounds like the kind of person that a visual artist could relate to. Sounds like the kind person that Lynch, an artist who famously cares little for words and explanations, could relate to.
Every new experience to Merrick is an electric charge and Lynch has always been the kind of artist who hears something amazing in crackles and buzzes.
Fun fact: This was the movie that prompted the Oscars to have a Best Make-Up award. While the film was showered with nominations in most of the top shelf categories, many critics felt that Christopher Tucker’s amazing recreation of Merrick’s condition deserved some kind of trophy from somebody. But the Academy Awards didn’t yet have a category for that sort of thing.
A year later they finally added it and An American Werewolf in London took the first prize.