Elvis (2022)

 There is a scene early in Baz Lurhmann's 'Elvis' where a young Presley, then living in a poor mostly black Mississippi neighborhood, follows some intoxicating rhythms first to a shack of a club where a couple is vigorously making out, and then to a tent rivial service. Both venues are throbbing with rhythmic physical motion, both reaching for ecsticy, one in an earthy and one in a spiritual way. Yet both gropings for paradise look and sound striking similar. The parallels to the contradictions at the heart of the life of The King of Rock and Roll, and of the film's central relationship readily present themselves.

Lurhmann, a director known for outsized sensabilites, visual flair and musical excess, is really the perfect choice to direct a biopic of Elvis Presley. As a man who has found  new ways to approach off told tales from Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet to The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rogue, Baz approaches the life story of Elvis Presley through the lense of arguably the most important relationship of his life.

Colonel Tom Parker, not his real name or rank, was Elvis's longtime, yea life long agent. A consument "snowman", Parker famously controlled Presley's career, often forcing it in directions not of his clients preference in order to make quick short term profits, of which he would enjoy a whopping 50% share. The most famous example of Parker's explotive approach are probably the many low quality movies, some of them admittedly endearing, Elvis made in the 50's and 60's. Another example is Elvis's multi year Vegas residency in which The King was almost a form of slave, and under which the drug habit flourished that would untimely take his life.

Cast against type Tom Hanks plays Parker as a sort of evil wizard, employing a voice I've heard described as "Elmer Fudd meets Bela Lugsoi's Dracula." Sensing the ultimate meal ticket Parker casts his spell on Presley early on with elaborate promises of musical fame and fourtine, even an acting career. Parker does indeed deliver, but runs Presley raged over the course of decades. Presley's periodic rebellions against Parker's tight control, sometimes successful and sometimes not, constitute the narrative core of this movie. It is at its heart a series of vignettes, Lurhmann seems to pressume the film's audiance knows the basic outline of Elvis's life story, and from that picks the episodes he's most interested in, like censorship troubles in the 50's, the 68 comeback special, and the 70's Vegas residency.

While the strong qualities of the visual composition and the editing of the film are among its highlights, the movie is carried by its lead. Newcomer Austin Butler has a hell of a star turn here, he is charming and at times captivating. The Elvis persona is so well known that the task of capturing that essence, plus bringing some depth to it, and all the physical things that come with the role, is really a much greater acting challange then it might appear in a world loaded with Elvis impersonators. An Oscar nod is not out of the question, Butler is excellent. (Olivia DeJonge also does a lot without much screen time as Pricilla.)

While 'Elvis' is a film which I like more and more the more I think about it, and which I definitely want to see again, it still remains very much trapped in the confines of the bio-pic formula, even as it finds new and entertaining ways to play around within them. What it does it does very well, for all its external flash at its heart it's a very empathetic, and in the end tragically melancholy story. In this way it's does The King as right as he's ever been done. ***