The Man elephant is the type of history that shocks for its apparent fancy to have been reality. Of a form extremely circus David Lynch he counts to the history of Joseph Merrick, English, born in Leicester in 1862, that for congenital defects he completely presented disfigured fisionomia, remembering the skin excess that has in the face of the elephants. In full Victorian England, Joseph is portraied as a slave of its physical condition and through it he presents yourself in shows of horrors to survive. The great overturn in the life of the protagonist if of when the Dr. Treves interpreted for. the Hopkins knows that obtains to give legitimacy to scientific conflict humanitarian X certainly lived by the doctor when coming across itself with Merrick.
Jhon Hurt interprets the Man Elephant and in a completely postural effort revive the drama of the protagonist. The excess of maquiagem to leave it similar to forced it to Merrick to find a balance between movement, speaks and to look at to compensate the face plastered for the artificial enxertos that had helped to characterize the personage. With base in this Hurt triad humanity to the terrifying figure developed an impressive interpretation giving that exhibited. David Lynch in extremely efficient way shows the reality of the emergencies of the British hospitals in the end of century XIX, contextualizando the poverty and lack of perspective of great part of the population in the age of Jack, the Estripador. The photograph in black person and white backwards airs of German expressionismo to the film, therefore in films as Nosferatu and the Cabinet of the Dr. Calegari the subject freak was recurrent to explain buzzes and vampires trying to interact with human beings. Under this deep cloth of, Lynch it goes counting to the existencial drama of the said Man Elephant, that although seen as an aberration is human and tries to interact with the members of its species.
The fact of the film to only have been established in the real history of Merrick (it has stories of researchers that points a bigger autonomy of Joseph under its proper life) does not eliminate the latent scienter of the plot, that is, to relegate humanity to a member physically dislocated of the humanity. When Joseph uncovers itself that it is capable to read, to produce art, to feel taste for the company of the people, is verified that the conflict animal-human being exists only in the physical appearance of the personage who obtains to express its sensible humanity in full way. From this, with much subtility, Lynch illustrates the animalesca brutality of the human beings ' ' perfeitos' ' physically that they are used to advantage of the defect of Joseph to have fun themselves perversely and to gain money. In this direction the expectador if questions on who really would be the animal? One human being with the disfigured body, but, that possua an immense compassion and capacity to pardon to all to be accepted or a carrier of normal physicist, but that it keeps an interior brutal animal as some contemporaries of Merrick as Jack, the Estripador?