The David Lynch film that every single child should see

I had a fever. I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t think clearly, but since I was under ten years old, I wasn’t afraid. I had been sick before and was feeling better. My parents weren’t worried, the family dog was on the other end of the living room couch and the TV was switched to The Movie Channel. While my friends were stuck in an overheated classroom learning cursive by heart like a pack of sane buffoons, I drifted in and out of consciousness as movies played on the cathode ray tube hidden eight feet from me in a carved wooden alcove. I can’t remember if I had a sore throat or a persistent cough. I remember being happy and hungry for sensations. That was my happy place.

By that age, I had seen enough movies to know that it wouldn’t just be Jaws or Airplane. – which, to my young mind, represented the pinnacle of cinema. I knew everything about the Academy Awards and kept track of which films were nominated for Oscars. I remember finding it strange in 1980 that two black and white films were nominated in the Best Picture category, and I was disinclined to watch them for that very reason. But on that terrible day, the programmers at The Movie Channel had decided that I would spend my afternoon watching David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man.”

I wasn’t entirely unreceptive to the idea. The grotesque Makeup design by Christopher Tucker gave Lynch’s film the appeal of a monster movie. Since I had seen most of Universal’s horror classics from the 1930s and 1940s by this point, I could stick with a black and white film if there was a hideous creature lurking in it. In fact, I viewed The Elephant Man as a freak show. Two hours later, with the temperature over 40 degrees, the world was a very different place.

When I learned yesterday afternoon through a barrage of texts that David Lynch had died, I felt disconnected from reality. Although the longtime smoker’s recent disclosure of his emphysema diagnosis forced us to consider a world without further surrealist excursions from the sui generis filmmaker, I still couldn’t imagine an artist so vital and limitlessly inventive was mortal. Given the fact that I was in the middle of writing an appreciation Bob Uecker, who had just passed byI didn’t have the psychological space to adapt to this new reality. But before I plunge back into the sardonic brilliance of Uecker’s Harry Doyle in “Major League,” I allowed myself a moment. And at that moment, fighting back tears in the middle of a public library, I sat back down on the couch, sick as a dog, and watched The Elephant Man.

It’s been decades since I last saw The Elephant Man, but I can still remember the nightmarish opening sequence in which John Merrick’s mother is attacked by a herd of elephants. Should I blame this incident for Merrick’s deformities? I was slightly hallucinating and was probably more confused than scared; I know I’ve never seen a studio film before that featured something so strange, which caught my attention for at least another ten minutes.

In the film’s first conventionally staged scene, we are taken through a freak show from the perspective of Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), who is curious as to why police officers were called to close one of the exhibitions. The ambitious surgeon learns that an attraction called “The Elephant Man” is causing a stir. When he learns that this creature is so deformed that it is considered indecent for public viewing, he later returns to generously pay the beast’s owner for a private showing.

Lynch masterfully treats Treves’ visit as a suspenseful set piece, with the attendant leading the doctor down a dark corridor and into a room slowly lit by firelight, revealing Merrick in all his indescribable ugliness. Lynch pushes toward Hopkins, who doesn’t gasp for air but sheds a tear. He is touched by this man’s condition and probably wants to help him.

The viewer is only properly introduced to Merrick half an hour into the film. At this point we have seen him paraded to the astonished edification of Treves’ colleagues and exploited again by a hospital orderly. After so much preparation, the Merrick we imagined turns out to be far more monstrous than the one whose appearance would bring a blood-curdling scream from an unsuspecting nurse – or at least that’s how it felt for me on that couch. From that moment on, I was just as fascinated by The Elephant Man as I was back then the trench run finale of Star Wars.

I’m not a parent, but I was once a child and I firmly believe that many children can handle troubling topics, provided the director shows restraint and compassion. Although Lynch doesn’t shy away from the cruelty inflicted on Merrick (his kidnapped return to the freak show in the third act is particularly shocking), it is the kindness he has shown that allows him to come out of his shell and reveal himself as a human being That it’s full of potential is what resonates long after the credits roll. At this basic level, “The Elephant Man” is ideal for children.

What makes it essential is the Lynchian nature of it all. The aforementioned prologue, Merrick’s foray into pantomime, and his passage into the cosmos are equal parts wondrous and mysterious. That he hastens his death by removing the pillows from his bed in the final scene might raise some questions among astute youngsters, but there’s no better way to complete this lynching primer with the answer, “I don’t know.” That’s right, kids. It’s up to you to find out, and besides, there’s no wrong answer. When they ask if Merrick went back to heaven, they respond gently, “I don’t know.” And if you don’t feel like dealing with these questions, I have the perfect solution: leave it alone view.

I did that one winter afternoon some 40 years ago, and it was that memory that calmed my soul as I took my first uncertain steps into a world where David Lynch is now a memory – one that lasts forever because nothing will die.