Elvis (2022)
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
Warner Brothers pictures, 159 minutes, PG13
★★★
American culture circulates the word generation to stamp everyone born during a particular time period as cookies from the same mold. A recent screening of Elvis reminded of the inaccuracy of this. Elvis Presley meant nothing to me. I was an infant when he debuted, in elementary school when he made his first comeback, and was musically weaned on acid rock and protest music. I heard his songs on the radio, but wanted nothing to do with a guy who idolized Richard Nixon, then became a bloated has-been in Vegas, a place I've never desired to visit.
Elvis made scads of money because so many people do worship Elvis and flock to Graceland with religious-like fervor. As biopics generally go, this one traces its subject from boyhood poverty to stardom and tragic demise. At heart, it's about the relationship between Elvis (Austin Butler) and his Svengali-like manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). Elvis was the headliner, but it was Parker who made him more than a white trash rockabilly weirdo who shocked white folks in Memphis by hanging out with black musicians–B.B. King, Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton–dressing oddly, and gyrating his hips and pelvis in “lewd” ways.
Parker tried to clean up Elvis, first by taking him on tour with Hank Snow (David Wenham) and then trying to package him as family entertainment. As most people know, he wasn't entirely successful in the latter effort, so Parker turned from cajoler to control freak to maximize the monetization of the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.”
Other aspects of the Elvis saga are on display–his stint in the army (that, or go to jail), his marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJong), the compliance of his father Vernon (Richard Roxburgh) in Parker's plans, and Elvis’s downward drug spiral. All of this is aimed at presenting Elvis as a fallen demigod.
Insofar as the historical record goes, it's a whitewash job that makes Elvis into an innocent victim. With some justification, Parker wears the black hat; he was a fraud, a con man, a problem gambler, and a schemer who was always one step ahead of Elvis. That said, I just don't buy the idea that a personality and ego as big as that of Elvis was passive in all of this. It denies Presley’s agency.
This is a Baz Luhrmann film, so you know the production values are high, though Elvis is certainly no Moulin Rouge. Luhrmann tries to walk the borders between gauzy and gaudy, but the second is hard to do because Elvis was already over the top. How could one even make a parody of Graceland? At times, it felt as if Luhrmann was just slapping some lipstick and ruffled shirts on Elvis, which is akin to adding a few more sparkles to Liberace’s jacket.
The good news is that Butler was spectacular. He did his own singing in one of the best Presley imitations ever, though he doesn't look that much like his subject. He plays the role of the caged artist with great aplomb. Tom Hanks, though, polarized audiences as the halt-of-speech Parker. I don’t how the real Parker spoke, so I leave it to you to determine if Hanks butchered the role, played according to a flawed script, or nailed Parker's patter.
The film was overly long, an ongoing problem with biopics that give childhood-to-grave coverage. A bigger problem: Most biopics dealing with musicians who die “young” are exactly the same. They follow the story arc of Joseph Campbell's “hero's journey,” but instead of a metaphorical return “home,” the hero dies. If we replace Elvis, change the songs and costumes, and alter some details (race, gender, nationality) it's the same thing we've seen with Jim Morrison (The Doors), Amy Winehouse (Amy), Freddie Mercury (Bohemian Rhapsody), Charlie Parker (Bird), Sid Vicious (Sid and Nancy), Billie Holiday (Lady Sings the Blues), and … the beat has gone on and on. I'm sure if one of the three stalled Janis Joplin films finally gets greenlighted, it will be the same thing.
Am I being callous? I admit Elvis wasn’t my idol. He could sing–though his repertoire didn't evolve much–but I acknowledge his importance in the evolution of rock music. Yet, had Butler not been so good, aside from Luhrmann's carnival-like touches, Elvis would have bored me. I’m among those who think it's time to put biopics out to pasture.
Rob Weir
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment