David Lynch’s The Elephant Man is a quiet thunderclap of a film. Shot in stark black and white, it tells the true story of John Merrick, a man treated as a spectacle by Victorian society and slowly revealed as something far rarer: profoundly human. With performances that linger and imagery that etches itself into memory, Lynch trades shock for compassion and asks what dignity really looks like when the world refuses to offer it.
This screening marks the final chapter of the Rialto’s Lynch in Focus series, a fitting close to a run devoted to one of cinema’s most singular minds.