Elvis
Baz Luhrmann squeezes the life of Elvis Presley into a dazzling, flamboyant and strangely artificial feature extravaganza.
Love Me Tender: Austin Butler and Olivia DeJonge
That’s Elvis, as in Elvis Presley. And who better to capture that life of excess and glitz than the great Australian showman Baz Luhrmann? It’s hard to believe that this is only Luhrmann’s sixth feature in a career spanning thirty years. Few directors alive display such an individualistic style, and from the opening minutes – nay, seconds – we know that we are in for the Baz bedazzlement. Even so, any film attempting to condense an entire life – and particularly one so well known – into just 160 minutes, is going to be a challenge. In addition, the life of Elvis has been told so many times on screen that it seems almost perverse to dig up the legend again. But of all the Elvis impersonators before him, Austin Butler is a real revelation. From the callow man from Memphis mingling with the original purveyors of rock’n’roll and the blues (“black music”) to the bloated 42-year-old propping up Vegas – and all the gyrations in between – Butler embodies the look, the voice and the charisma of The King.
More problematic is Tom Hanks, as recognisable a figure to a contemporary audience as Elvis was in his day, here playing a character better known by name than by appearance. Although prosthetically enhanced and packaged in a fat suit, he is still Tom Hanks, with just a funny (Dutch?) accent and Sylvester the Cat lisp. And because the singer’s manager Colonel Tom Parker is the voice in our ear, it is unclear whether he is the man who ruined Elvis or who made him. Initially, the film feels as if it belongs to Parker and his comrades at the carnival (recent Oscar nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee plays a singer there), rather than to the boy with the soulful eyes and suggestive swagger. While channelling the rich seam of black music, the kid is actually white and thus ripe to become “the greatest carnival attraction I have ever seen,” in Parker’s words. And so, eventually, Elvis and the huckster meet in a hall of mirrors and the latter leads the boy out of the labyrinth – and towards untold success. Then the film slips from Parker to Presley and the action shifts up a gear.
Drawing on all the tricks of his trade – multiple split screens, swirling camera moves, rapid cutting and slow mo’ – Luhrmann does his damnedest to elevate the biopic to his own terms. Nonetheless, the true celebrity profile is the one that captures the spirit rather than the entire life history of its subject. While Elvis constantly entertains, it ultimately fails to reveal the human being beneath the razzmatazz. Recent biopics such as Mank, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Spencer – and, indeed, Simon Curtis's My Week with Marilyn (2011) – successfully bottled the essence of their subjects, and proved less exhausting in the process. And talking of Marilyn, she is another icon much exploited by the cinema, so it will be interesting to see what Andrew Dominik makes of her in his new psychological interpretation of the actress in Blonde. For now, though, Luhrmann’s Elvis is an entertaining addition to a well-worn legacy.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr, David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey, Dacre Montgomery, Leon Ford, Gary Clark Jr, Yola, Natasha Bassett, Xavier Samuel, Adam Dunn, Alton Mason, Shonka Dukureh.
Dir Baz Luhrmann, Pro Baz Luhrmann, Gail Berman, Catherine Martin, Patrick McCormick and Schuyler Weiss, Screenplay Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, Ph Mandy Walker, Pro Des Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy, Ed Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond, Music Elliott Wheeler, Costumes Catherine Martin, Sound Wayne Pashley, Dialect coaches Charmian Gradwell and Erik Singer.
Bazmark Films/The Jackal Group-Warner Bros.
160 mins. Australia/USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 24 June 2022. Cert. 12A.
