A breathtaking accomplishment by first-time executive producer Mel Brooks (his first non-comedy) and director David Lynch (whose sole previous theatrical directing credit was the thematically-linked Eraserhead), The Elephant Man is an emotional, spiritual examination of alienation and redemption. It earned a well-deserved eight Academy Award nominations -- and shockingly walked away with none.

David Lynch was the perfect choice to helm the movie, his first mainstream film after the cult hit Eraserhead; in fact, the opening three minutes and forty-five seconds of The Elephant Man form such a flawless bridge between the earlier undisciplined experimental film and the Merrick story that it could belong equally to both. The photography, by the renowned Freddie Francis, is in high-contrast black and white (actual B&W film stock was used, rather than color stock reduced in post-production); even within innately low-contrast scenes the photography is razor-sharp, highlighting the smoke-choked textures of early-machine-age Victorian London.

The soundtrack is what we have since come to expect from Lynch, a dense multilayered soundscape -- simultaneously mechanical and organic -- that is as much a character of the film as anything that appears on the screen. It is aided by haunting music by John Morris and Samuel Barber; Morris' theme, a mournful circuslike piece in a minor key, is played over an imageless opening credits sequence and sums up all of the emotional underpinnings of the film. The Elephant Man is a very different creature with the sound turned off.

The 1980 film was also among the first to realistically portray the era, and those who had sentimentalized the age (basing their assumptions on films such as Mary Poppins) were shocked to see the horrible conditions that a large slice of Londoners lived in. Dr. Treves' London hospital is realistically shown; in English hospitals of the era, lay nurses tended to be women of questionable moral character, many of them alcoholics, prostitutes, and other discards of society. Treves is shown tending to a man who had been mangled by a machine, and the doctor notes that they'll "be seeing more and more of these sorts of cases" as he performs surgery (including hot-poker cauterization) while male hospital aides immobilize the patient by pulling on ropes tied to his ankles and arms. The gentleness of Merrick is thereby brought into high relief against the brutality of the world around him.

Film Synopsis: A magnificent and heartbreaking fantasia on the life of John Merrick (1862-1890), a victim of three diseases which left him horribly disfigured. From his 1884 discovery in a traveling freak show by Dr. Frederick Treves, a famous and accomplished physician of Victorian London, the film relates the struggle of a kind, distinguished soul buried within the shell of a monster.

Technical

Video:	Widescreen 2.15:1 (Anamorphic)
Audio:	ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC] ENGLISH: Dolby Surround Surround [CC] FRENCH: Dolby Surround Mono
Subtitles:	English, Closed Captions
Chapters:	1

One of the oddest decisions (or mistakes) made in the long-awaited release of the film to DVD is the lack of chapter stops. The entire film is presented as a single chapter; given the non-appearance by Lynch on any of the supplementary features (and the less-than-typically-Lynchian control he had over the film) it seems unlikely that this was his decision, but since no chapter list is included on the one-page insert it does appear intentional.

The image is beautiful, and Freddie Francis' evocative black-and-white photography is reproduced in crystalline form. It should be noted that depite previous news that the DVD is presented at 1.85:1, in fact the DVD is in the correct 2.1:1 ratio. Edge-to-edge sharpness is spot on, and there is no trace of color drift or off-white shifting.  On a large screen the disc practically requires a progressive-scan player to minimize scan-line stairstepping in the high-contrast cinematography.

Menus are also presented in black and white, and the film playing as background of the menu selections apes the famed opening credits of Se7en; scratches and dust are intentionally evident, along with film jitter and jump cuts not present during the scenes as they play within the film proper.

Supplements

• Theatrical trailer (2:44)
• The Elephant Man Revealed (29:59)
• Christopher Tucker's Workshop (2:39)
• Narrated Photo Gallery (4:24)

Supplements for this disc are somewhat meager. There is a sub-three-minute theatrical trailer, a 2-1/2 minute presentation by makeup artist Christopher Tucker on the appliances used on actor John Hurt (for the most part the camera remains on three original plaster casts of Hurt's head, while Tucker explains what we're seeing), and a "narrated photo gallery," consisting of ten photos and a short video clip all dealing with the makeup for the film, again narrated by Tucker.

The biggest supplement is a new half-hour color documentary on the making of the film, or -- more precisely -- the casting, makeup, and cinematography of the film. David Lynch himself is not seen or heard from during the documentary, save for an occasional photo and mention by the interviewees -- executive producer Mel Brooks, John Hurt, and Tucker.Details on the casting take up a third of the documentary, and includes one of the more interesting-by-omission comments -- the principals were surprised and thrilled to find that Anne Bancroft agreed to be in the film, but it seems odd that the fact that she was married to Mel Brooks at the time doesn't seem important. There is very little mentioned about the actual filming of the movie, and the life of Merrick himself is never spoken of (nor the fact that he suffered not from "Elephant Man Disease" -- neurofibromatosis -- but of Proteus Syndrome, an unrelated disease). Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Merrick's life, however, remains that he is now owned by Michael Jackson.