The Elephant Man: As remarkable a debut as Eraserhead is, it’s even more remarkable that David Lynch’s follow-up was The Elephant Man, one of the great humanist dramas of the 1980s (note that most of the “great movies of the 1980s” came out in or before 1982). The Elephant Man is the A-1 example of the elusive “serious movie for adults,” a film that could fairly be categorized as “Oscar-bait” only because of its subject: John Hurt as Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man” of 1880s London, physically deformed beyond belief, the victim of carnies and their freak shows (and the many willing customers eager to take a peek). It’s an old cliché that the surest way to an Acting Oscar is to play someone disabled, dying, mentally ill, or so marginalized and beaten down that their only salvation could be a gold statue. These films are known: I Am Sam, The Soloist, Love Story, A Beautiful Mind, Precious, Kiss of the Spider Woman; perhaps most memorably, Robert Downey Jr. singlehandedly put a brief end to the trend wearing blackface in 2008’s Tropic Thunder—and getting an Oscar nomination!
John Hurt didn’t win Best Actor at the 1981 Oscars, but his climactic line—“I am not an animal. I AM A HUMAN BEING. I am… a human being”—is immortal. It’s one of the great lines in movie history. If The Elephant Man is under-appreciated today, it’s only because Lynch went to another planet with Blue Velvet after striking out with Dune. A black and white period piece starring a character with severe physical deformities, a film that ends in his tragic death at 27, isn’t crowd-pleasing nor “mind-blowing” fare; it's a consummate drama of universal human emotion. Lynch whiffed in places (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Inland Empire), but The Elephant Man should’ve been his induction into Academy history; more people would’ve seen it, just as James L. Brooks’ Terms of Endearment became an instant classic in 1983—only because The Right Stuff bombed…
The Untouchables: A paycheck job for Brian De Palma, a consummate piece of entertainment made by Hollywood when the movie industry could still afford it. Based on the mid-century television show more than the real Eliot Ness, Kevin Costner leads in his first faux-Gary Cooper performance alongside Andy Garcia, Charles Martin Smith, and Sean Connery; the latter gives his best non-Bond performance here. Does The Untouchables come close to Carrie or Blow Out? No. Body Double? Well, it’s not as challenging—it’s not challenging at all. The Untouchables is made in the same register as F1, a fantasy with no surprises that manages to avoid becoming predictable (mostly); but even on a money job, De Palma is present: zooming split diopter compositions, elaborate and slow crane moves, and a slow motion shootout in a train station made up on the fly when David Mamet’s script had to be adjusted (against his will; De Palma claims that, at the premiere, Mamet got up and left the theater when the train sequence started, and only reentered when it was over). Joseph Kosinski may be able to light a scene properly, but he’s no artist, and he’s certainly not Brian De Palma.
A Summer’s Tale: The third in Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons series, filmed throughout the 1990s; long unavailable in North America, all four films were restored and released by the Criterion Collection a couple of years ago. Beaches, bread, wine, women, blue skies, and scuzzy guys: it’s what’s on the menu. Rohmer made this particular series, partly autobiographical, in his 70s; unlike his Nouvelle Vague compatriot Jacques Rivette, who also continued to make movies with and about young people, Rohmer’s later films don’t reflect the time in which they were produced; the people in A Summer’s Tale could easily meet up with the crew from La Collectionneuse or The Green Ray with zero anachronisms or misunderstandings. Love, sex, romance, and playing men against women and vice versa—all of this stays pretty static, despite cultural shifts and pseudo-revolutions. Attitudes, prejudices, and what’s considered appropriate or lecherous may morph, but Rohmer proves that the basic game between men and women is, for all intents and purposes, fixed in place.
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