The Film
The Elephant Man is often described as director David Lynch’s most ‘normal’ film. While I guess such a description might just about hold up in a court of law, though, especially if you conveniently ignore The Straight Story, Lynch’s unique touch and vision is present in almost every exquisite frame.
It’s there in the way The Elephant Man soundtrack routinely ramps up what would normally just be ambient noise from gas lamps, distant boilers and other eerily indeterminate industrial machines. It’s there in the surreal but respectively disturbing and moving opening and ending sequences. It’s there in the complexity and depth with which the film explores the dualities and conflicts of inner and outer beauty, both on an individual and societal level. It’s there in the sense created by the often discordant soundtrack effects and throw away shots of industrial machinery of an extra, bigger, dehumanising world that lies just beyond our view but is always bearing down on and threatening to overwhelm the sometimes delicate, sometimes brutal drama of the humans striving for relevance and purpose in the story.
There’s even a trademark Lynch moment where the camera zooms through the eyehole in Merrick’s hood before entering a bewildering, disturbing vision that combines a hyped up version of reality with Merrick’s tortured dreams. Lynch has used this sort of visual metaphor for ‘crossing between the real and imagined world’ many times since. Such as, most famously, Blue Velvet’s ‘ear zoom’.
Most of all, a good part of why The Elephant Man remains so gut-wrenchingly powerful 40 years after it was made is Lynch’s peerless ability to create a slightly off-kilter, amplified but still believable world where senses and feelings become acutely heightened, and dreams both light and dark feel equally at home. And by drawing us so completely into The Elephant Man’s otherworldly yet still somehow potently tangible, visceral space, Lynch ensures that when the mirror is held up in front of an anguished Merrick, we’re unbearably aware that the only true ugliness reflected back is that of ourselves.
Release details
Studio: StudioCanal/Brooksfilms
What you get: Region-free 4K Blu-ray, Region B locked HD Blu-ray, Region B locked bonus feature Blu-ray, Collector’s Edition Booklet, 5 on-set postcards; gatefold packaging with multiple photographs, outer packaging that reveals a pop up cardboard cathedral in the design Merrick builds in the film
Extra features: Photographing the Elephant Man (Interview with Frank Cooper); BFI Q&A with Jonathan Sanger; Interview with David Lynch; Interview with John Hurt; Interview with David Lynch about his artwork; Documentary on the real life of Joseph Merrick; Behind the scenes stills gallery; Mike Figgis interviews David Lynch; The Terrible Elephant Man Revealed ‘making of’ documentary
HDR Formats: HDR10, Dolby Vision
HDR10 Metadata: Max Light Level and MaxFALL both show as 0 nits.
Best Audio Option: DTS-HD 2.0
Key kit used for this test: Sony 65A9G, Samsung 65Q90R, Panasonic UB820, Oppo 205
Picture Quality
Before I start in on this section, I need to say a quick word about the gorgeous package Studio Canal has put together for this 4K Elephant Man release.
An outer cardboard sleeve clips open to reveal a pop-up version of the cardboard cathedral Merrick builds in the film. An inner section slides out from this outer sleeve and opens up twice to reveal the package’s three discs, all of which have a lovely still of a different character from the film printed on them. There are separate photos behind each disc’s see-through mount, and two more larger stills appear on the outer cover of the fold out disc section.
As if all this wasn’t lovely enough, the fourth section of the double-fold disc-holding package houses a beautifully presented collector’s edition booklet containing lots of information about and pictures from the film. Finally, you get five high quality matt postcards showing yet more stills from the film.
All of this care and attention to detail is, of course, no less than The Elephant Man deserves. But it’s still very much appreciated that Studio Canal has actually gone to the effort of doing it.
The only frustration with the release is that stupidly both the HD Blu-ray of the film and the HD Blu-ray containing most of the extra features are locked to Region B. So if you live in the US and you want to import this gloriously presented package, you’ll need a multi-region 4K Blu-ray deck.
The new 4K picture transfer ticks all the right AV enthusiast boxes. The film was shot on 35mm, and the original photographic negative was used to create the new digital 4K master. This master has also had HDR added, in both standard HDR10 and Dolby Vision flavours, using state of the art HDR 16-bit workflows. And perhaps most importantly of all, the new master has been supervised by David Lynch, including him personally color correcting the image to give the black and white finish the tone he wanted.
As you’d hope from all this effort, the finished image is a thing of beauty. On the detail side the improvement over the HD Blu-ray is considerable – even though the HD image is itself impressive. The 4K image is much more detailed in highly textured areas such as clothing, faces, hair and the streets and walls of Victorian London.
It also has a touch more grain, giving the picture a more unified and authentically 35mm feel than the HD Blu-ray, which ends up looking rather ‘scrubbed’ by comparison. Faces in particular look a bit plasticky on the HD image by comparison.
To be clear, this is thankfully not one of those remasters from 35mm like we used to see in 4K Blu-ray’s early days where the grain feels exaggerated and dominant. Here it’s truly just a function of the 4K picture resolving the image on the original negative down to a more granular level. Note, too, that the exceptional sharpness of the picture doesn’t in any way make the film’s incredible make up effects look more artificial. On the contrary, you just become even more in awe of make-up artist Christopher Tucker’s jaw-dropping work.
It’s no surprise from watching the picture to find that it’s delivered via a consistently spectacularly high bit-rate that routinely ticks along at between 75 and 85Mbps, even with relatively static images, and sometimes jumps to above 100Mbps for especially complex and heavily textured shots. These are huge numbers by 4K Blu-ray standards. The Avengers: Endgame 4K Blu-ray, by comparison, mostly runs at between 30 and 40Mbps.
The impact of HDR is spectacular, too. The grading opens up the beautiful dynamics of the black and white image – especially if you have a TV and 4K Blu-ray player able to make use of the extra scene by scene information provided by the Dolby Vision master. Black levels remain as immaculately deep as they are on the HD Blu-ray, but the darkest corners also contain extra greyscale subtleties and details.
It’s in the brightest areas where HDR makes the most difference, though. The slightly ‘flared out’ look to brightly lit faces, windows and reflections you get with the SDR image is replaced in HDR by much more detailing and nuanced shading right up to the very brightest picture points, despite bright areas simultaneously typically looking punchier and more dynamically contrasted against the gorgeously rich black levels than they do on the HD Blu-ray.
The HDR combines with the extra resolution, too, to develop a more comprehensive and effective sense of depth and space.
This being a black and white film, there’s no normal expanded color to look for on the 4K Blu-ray. However, the extent to which the remaster’s HDR grade retains the stark, ‘true’ black and white tone of the original film and the HD Blu-ray despite the enhanced light range is lovely to behold. And it speaks volumes, of course, to Lynch’s personal involvement with the remastering process.
When I reviewed Schindler’s List on 4K Blu-ray a while back, a few people contacted me questioning the point of applying HDR to a black and white film. But I’ll say now what I said then – that HDR is about light range, and is therefore easily as capable of making a difference in black and white as it is in color. In fact, the relative starkness of black and white images arguably reveals HDR’s advantages more clearly in some ways than color images do.
A couple of shots on The Elephant Man 4K Blu-ray look a touch unstable and compressed (the first few seconds of Chapter 2 in particular), and a slightly soft look to one or two short exterior shots also visible on the HD Blu-ray (and presumably present in the original negative) is slightly exaggerated on the 4K Blu-ray by the relative pristineness of the other scenes. But these are very small, maybe unavoidable blemishes on an otherwise beautiful 4K remastering effort.
Sound Quality
While purists may be disappointed that there’s no option to choose the film’s original mono audio track, and surround sound fans might wish there was a multichannel Dolby Atmos or DTS:X remaster, the provided DTS 2.0 mix is nicely done. It doesn’t spoil the feel of the stark, striking mix, and while it introduces more scale to the strange industrial sounds that almost constantly accompany the drama, it doesn’t upset the overall balance between the film’s audio elements.
A surprising amount of dynamic range opens up from time to time, too, complete with some surprisingly deep bass.
Note that the soundtrack on the 4K Blu-ray is the same as that found on the HD Blu-ray.
Extra Features
Fittingly for such a lovingly created package as this new 4K Blu-ray release, there are extras galore here. Though only two are completely new for the 4K release.
These two newbies are both found on the 4K Blu-ray, and comprise a decently interesting if slightly long (at 25 minutes) interview with on-set photographer Frank Connor, plus a more interesting Q&A at the British Film Institute with producer Jonathan Sanger.
The bulk of the extra features are found on a dedicated Bonus Feature Blu-ray disc. These kick off with a fascinating retrospective interview about the film with David Lynch, followed by a good interview with an (as ever) disarmingly charming but actually quite pithy John Hurt.
There’s another interview with Lynch at the Cartier Foundation next, where the director talks about his artwork as he walks around a collection of his paintings and sculptures. There’s nothing specific about the Elephant Man here, and his film work is only occasionally touched on. But the interview nonetheless reveals some interesting insights into Lynch’s unique mind. And sections where he discusses his unique take on the relationship between sound and images naturally do intersect with his filmmaking.
It’s back to more specific Elephant Man content next, with a strong 20-minute documentary – which references the film, too – looking at the real life of Joseph Merrick. This includes discussion of the origins of the confusion surrounding Merrick’s John/Joseph name.
A behind the scenes stills gallery is up next. All the pictures here are lovely – but sadly there are only 12 of them.
Lynch is back being interviewed again for the next extra. This time the interviewee is director Mike Figgis, and the chat covers Lynch’s artistic inspirations and general approach to filmmaking. It’s presented in a suitably Lynchian style, and is well worth 20 minutes of your time if you have any interest in Lynch’s work beyond Elephant Man, or the creative process generally.
The last extra is The Terrible Elephant Man Revealed – a solid half hour ‘making of’ documentary built around interviews with producers Jonathan Sanger and Mel Brooks, John Hurt, cinematographer Freddie Francis and make up artist Christopher Tucker.
Verdict
StudioCanal’s new 4K Blu-ray release of The Elephant Man is a truly beautiful thing. The new 4K HDR picture quality is outstanding, and the packaging and accompanying booklet and postcards are all beautifully and thoughtfully designed.
The only sour note is the decision to region lock the two HD Blu-rays in the package to Region B. This ridiculous situation (4K Blu-rays, after all, don’t support region coding) means that any one wanting to import this EU release to the US will need a multi-region 4K Blu-ray player if they want to access the majority of the extra features.
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