ELVIS
2022 | Dir. Baz Luhrmann | 159 Minutes
"You know, my boy, the truth about the Rock of Eternity, is that it is forever just beyond our reach."
By chance, shady carnival promoter Colonel Tom Parker encounters young Elvis Presley and immediately sees potential for profit in his unique talent. Seizing the chance to take advantage of Presley as his manager, Parker exploits Presley for decades, struggling to control Presley's indomitable spirit and sex appeal while stifling his creative impulses and desire to reach a wider global audience.
With Elvis, famously flamboyant writer/director Baz Luhrmann tells the life story of one of the biggest pop culture icons of all time. Like most biographical pictures, the feature breezes through the major events of the subject's life, leaning into triumphs, dialing up the drama on tragedies, and selectively glossing over large stretches of time. What sets Elvis apart is that Luhrman's signature over-the-top style is evident in every frame of the picture, making it a thoroughly engaging sensory experience. Unfortunately, the film as a whole is immediately and irreparably derailed by framing Presley's parasitic manager Colonel Parker as central figure of the narrative. It's a bold decision, speaking volumes about how recording artists, even one of the biggest stars ever, can be abused by those closest to them. However, it's a choice that truly undermines the incredible work of lead actor Austin Butler as Presley, while calling attention to an unbelievably awful performance from Tom Hanks as Parker.
Elvis works best when it is focused on Presley and the music he was raised on and promoted all his life. The best moments of the picture explore his inspirations rooted in black music, how he was able to bring that sound to audiences that would otherwise dismiss it, as well as his controversial status as a prominent sex symbol. This is perfectly exemplified in the sequence depicting Presley's first performance in front of a full auditorium, intercutting moments from his childhood enthralled by gospel music at a black church, as the young women in the crowd go wild for the handsome singer's gyrating hips.
Austin Butler is phenomenal as the King of Rock and Roll, delivering a revelatory performance that believably embodies the larger-than-life legend while movingly conveying what makes the "King" human after all. Conversely, Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker is distractingly terrible, putting on a ridiculous accent and giving such a big, stagey performance that it makes the entire film markedly worse. Olivia DeJonge is impressive as Priscilla Presley though her presence is overshadowed by Butler and Hanks in starkly different ways.
Less a biopic centered on the legendary Elvis Presley and more a bizarre character study of his grossly unethical and opportunistic manager, Baz Luhrmann's Elvis takes one major disappointing creative swing, exacerbated by a questionable performance from Tom Hanks, that significantly makes the film worse. However, the feature is definitely worth seeing for Austin Butler's excellent portrayal of the icon. While it is a deeply flawed picture, it is at least never boring.
FRAGMENTS
- Certain moments of this film might as well have been lifted wholesale from 2007's Walk Hard, anyone making a musical biopic should watch that all-encompassing parody as an example of everything they should avoid doing
- As the film paints a mostly flattering portrait of the King, and also a testament to Austin Butler's performance, the Presley family very publicly endorses this picture
- I seriously love how the film touches upon Elvis's love of Captain Marvel Jr.
- I, for one, am very much looking forward to seeing Austin Butler as the sadistic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Dune: Part Two
