Film review: ‘ELVIS’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Baz Luhrmann is one of the least subtle directors of recent times. Perhaps only Michael Bay and Oliver Stone in the 90’s top him for obviousness and outrageousness. Having Baz direct a film about Elvis Presley who, at least in the latter part of his life, was known for excess and an extravagant lifestyle, promised to be a sensory assault. If an eyeball and eardrum pummelling is what people want, Baz doesn’t disappoint. With its manic editing, swooping swirling camera movements and constant explosions of light, colour and sound, this film will leave many audience members feeling punch drunk. Thankfully, though, for the most part, it works. Lurhmann’s manic fever dream images are often startling and they convincingly capture the tenuous and unreal world in which a superstar liked Elvis lived.
In what is admittedly a thumbnail sketch, the film traces Elvis’s life from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi through his early success, his infamy as a hip swivelling rock’n’roll rebel, to megastardom and his becoming fixture of the cultural firmament. Looming over all of this is the strange, slightly ridiculous but at times disturbing presence of his notorious manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). The film is as much about the Colonel as it is about the King with Parker (Hanks) at times narrating.
In terms of exploring Elvis’s life, career, character and the culture from which he emerged, this film is pretty superficial. There are no Ken Burns documentary-style insights into what made Elvis tick. He’s depicted almost as a southern archetype, a slightly naïve and honourable guy driven by a passion for music and love of family. Also, while not quite hagiography, this film clearly has Elvis as the hero of the story. The film briefly touches on his less redeeming qualities such as drug use, womanising and his love of guns which he occasionally uses in place of a TV remote control but the overwhelming impression is of a decent man overtaken by a corrupt world.
Austin Butler looks only a little like Elvis and is conspicuously trimmer than the King was in the 70’s but he captures his charisma, explosive energy, swagger, famed southern charm and courteous manner. Butler’s performance hits some terrific high points such as Elvis rehearsing with his enormous ensemble before his first Vegas show and enthusiastically revving up each musician and the King fiercely rebelling against the Colonel while on stage in Vegas. Butler shows he was clearly capable of a more expansive exploration of Elvis’s personality than the script allowed.
As the Colonel, Hanks delivers one of the showier turns of his career (outside Cloud Atlas). He plays Parker as a creepy, manipulative Mephistophelian figure, a carnival huckster who prides himself on fleecing rubes of their hard-earned. With a large prosthetic snoz, rubbery jowls and a slightly comical Dutch accent reminiscent of Austin Powers’ Goldmember, Hanks at first seems uncharacteristically hammy and it takes a while to acclimatise to his performance. Soon, though, he establishes the Colonel as an insidious and menacing figure. Not only does Parker plunder Elvis’s earnings (which he weirdly describes as ‘making lots of snow’) but he venomously undermines Elvis’s self-confidence whenever Presley tries to extricate himself from the Colonel’s clutches. Other characters, such as Elvis’s wife Priscilla (Olivia De Jonge) and Elvis’s dad Vernon (Richard Roxburgh) just seem to pass through the film with minimal impact on proceedings as they’re simply spectators to the Elvis and the Colonel show.
Given Elvis’s status as a cultural icon it would seem vital that a biopic explore not only his personal and professional life but his impact on society and its impact on him. The film’s a little shaky here as serious social and political themes don’t seem to be Baz Lurhmann’s forte but he at least makes the tumultuous events of the 60’s a starkly contrasting backdrop to Elvis’s lavish technicolour performances and lifestyle.
It’s hardly a revelation to say that Lurhmann is more about spectacle and soundscapes than social commentary and his lineage connects far more to musical directors like Vincente Minelli and Busby Berkely than to a Scorsese or a Coppola. Baz understands music and he is undeniably ingenious at integrating image and sounds as a potent cinematic weapon. It’s mainly in the depiction of musical performances that Luhrmann captures real magic here. Scenes of Elvis visiting a heaving black music club with BB King (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and watching Little Richard and Sister Rosetta Tharpe tear up the place are sensational as are numerous hyper-energised sequences featuring Elvis on stage in Vegas, delivering his ‘68 comeback special or performing in his early days when his pelvic gyrations sent young women into a frenzy and literally caused a riot.
Thankfully, Lurhmann not only pays decent homage to Elvis’s phenomenal musical gifts but also to the artists, particularly the African American church singers, blues and gospel legends like Big Boy Crudup and Big Mama Thornton, who shaped Elvis’s musical outlook in the deep south. In fact, the film is at pains to connect Elvis with African American culture, depicting him as a hero to young black audiences and a villain to white segregationist politicians who saw his melding or blues and country as shattering the wall they wanted to maintain between black and white. Interestingly, if at first a little jarringly, Lurhmann incorporates contemporary hip-hop into the soundtrack. It seems odd hearing this over images immaculately recreating the 1950’s but again this seems to be an attempt to convey Elvis’s connection to African American culture.
While it’s a flawed, at times cartoonish and unintentionally funny film, Baz Lurhmann’s Elvis is a mostly thrilling ride and a film that refreshingly breaks what had, in recent years, become a very cliched rock biopic mould.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ Action/ Adventure/ Animation.
Classification: M.
Director(s): Baz Luhrmann.
Release date: 16th June 2022.
Running time: 159 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm right here on 88.3 Southern FM. Nick can also be heard on “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Film Show” podcast. http://subcultureentertainment.com/2014/02/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-film-show