My Review of The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man was a great story and was not like any other basic movie that one sees and forgets about immediately after. The movie stayed with me throughout the day even after leaving class and made myself question whether I am a good person or a bad person. By the time we finished the movie in class, I had become a more compassionate person, more wary of other's feelings. One theme, perhaps the most obvious theme, of questioning one's own morality impacted me most. I liked the initial simplicity of the movie: the biography of a man living with extreme deformities in the 1880's. Later, when we analyzed the complexity of the movie and connected it to humanity's rape on mother nature and figured out the hidden religious allusions I grew began to dislike the movie. Though it was genius to subtly incorporate such complex and deep meanings within the movie in extraordinary and creative ways I think I lost how I identified and connected with the movie. Either way, Lynch was very successful in incorporating multiple themes in one movie but I personally connected most with the most simplistic theme of questioning "Am I a good man, or am I a bad man?".