The film revolves around London hospital surgeon Frederick Treves John Merrick, who faces a strange Victorian show in the East End in London. This man appears to reveal a mysterious man, while Dr. Frederick Treves gently tries, this man called Merrick is trying to restore his dignity.
The picture itself is a strange trade-off between Lynch's personal themes -- the night world of obscure, disturbing sexual obsessions -- and the requirements of a middlebrow message movie.
Lynch's powerful depiction of Merrick (played by John Hurt) moves a viewer from revulsion and fear to empathy and tenderness. That's the very movement of the story itself.
This is a tale of redemption and transcendence, of the hunchback of London Hospital, of the noble phantom who wanted to go to the opera, of Beauty and the Beast.
