Sofia’s review published on Letterboxd:
To be an object of scrutiny, subject to the unapologetically brutal gazes of the masses, to hear the broken chatter of their hysterical laughter, their cries of horror, groans of sheer disgust. We fear what we do not understand, and what disturbs us also entertains us. What is it that draws the blindly plodding masses to this man?
It is a tale crafted upon the clatter of newly emerging industrialism, where mechanistic visions of humankind clash with the culture of etiquette and outward appearance fundamental to that time. Stumbling into this dark world fraught with clammer and noise, is John Merrick— the elephant man— one incurably deformed, though possessing immense sensitivity and intelligence. Initially, he is characterised solely by what we cannot see of him— his face is obscured beneath a ghostly veil, his movements are lurching, shuddering, breathing haggard... Pain emanates from his every gesture. It is not only his corporeal disfigurement that spawns such immense agony— it is more crucially the immense psychic estrangement he is forced to labour under that amplifies his suffering.
He inhabits a phantasmagoric existence, never fully known, and all he himself knows of life is to be an object of scrutiny, a medical abnormality, his misery an instrument for profit, his ostracised position a source of glee for others. They gloss over his suffering for it is that of a beast, is undeserving of sympathy, sorrow. His body is a spectacle, an artefact. He’s the greatest freak in the world. And it is only when he utters words that the people stop for a moment to reconsider his humanity. Language, it seems, divides man from beast. And even then, in this world fuelled by surveillance and radical self-interest, it is impossible for us to be sure that those who claim to be a friend are not merely using him for their own profit, though in ways much subtler than before.
It is a film interrogating the physical, examining its interaction with the psychological and societal. The body— the vessel of the soul, a cluster of sensations and qualic perceptions, the sole thing that another can look upon with absolute scrutiny and say they recognise. For all that is mental remains in the dark. And to John Merrick, his body seems to be all that defines him— it is a colossus to which he is bound but with which he feels no kinship. It is the object of his suffering, the birthplace of his pain. And even when one begins to show pity, he becomes another spectacle all over again.