The Elephant Man Review

My Review on The Elephant Man

This was a film that was made in 1980 and although it was in black and white it added to the rustic effect of the 1880's feel of the film. The Elephant man is played by John Hurt and is almost unrecognizable under all that make up. This was a film that was based on a true story and tells how a man so disfigured is treated like an animal in a freak show. 'In unsympathetic Victorian England, John Merrick (Hurt) has been abused since childhood and forced into a freakshow because of his appalling deformity.' (Film 4)

The story is about a deformed man that became that way when he was a baby inside his mother's womb. His mother was traumatized by elephants and it was thought that this is what made him look the way he is. He is shown in a freak show and treated like an animal until a doctor named Frederick Treves comes and pays to see him and take him back to the hospital to study him. He thinks the Elephant man named John Merrick is an imbecile until he starts to talk. 'Merrick begins to communicate. Within time, it's all too clear that he's intelligent, sensitive, and above all only too aware of the tortuous life of humiliation that he has had to endure.' (BBC) The doctor helps him by giving him a room in the hospital and treats him respectfully and like a human being. One day a group of people come by John's room and start bullying him and treating him like a freak. John's original owner comes that night and takes him away and puts him back in a freakshow and mistreats him. John manages to escape with the help of the other freaks and makes his way back to the hospital and back to Frederick. There John commits suicide by removing the pillows from his bed and laying flat down on the bed where the weight of his tumors suffocates him. 'When he died in London in 1900, John Merrick was twenty-seven years old. Having been grotesquely deformed at birth from a disease called neurofibromatosis, with a head twice normal size, a twisted spine, and a useless right arm.' (The New York Times)