An Elvis movie seems, by every conceivable metric, a bad idea. The King of Rock ‘n Roll is such a seminal, influential figure in pop culture history, it seems futile and outright dishonest to condense his story to a mere feature film. That story of his life and career has also been covered extensively in some form or another, Elvis and the various chapters of his stardom already the subject of TV movies, miniseries, and documentaries galore. And biopics themselves are just a stagnant genre at this point, the domain purely of Oscar-bait ‘transformational’ performances, mediocre filmmaking, and tired, drawn-out formula –music biopics especially. Hell, aspects of Elvis’ life story were skewered for satire fifteen years ago in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. How could it ever be played straight after that?
Baz Luhrmann at the very least has no intention of playing it straight, or at least not without a whole lot of style heaped around it. His Elvis sticks to plenty of the familiar tropes, but doesn’t illustrate them in the paint-by-numbers way of so many of its’ counterparts. One might make the comparison to Rocketman, another music biopic with flourish that somewhat escapes its’ narrative confines –though Luhrmann doesn’t play around with narrative so much and has nothing on that films’ musical sequences -as much as he plays his own with exceptional energy. However, he does make key choices even in regards to story that amount to a more interesting movie than anticipated.
To start, the movie is less about Elvis on his own as it is about the relationship between him and his manipulative manager “the Colonel” Tom Parker –played by a baffling Tom Hanks in layers of prosthetics and an indiscernible accent. Elvis himself is played by Austin Butler, who has both the perfectly moulded male model features for the part, and an accurate approximation of the voice that doesn’t ever slip into parody -as much as Luhrmann’s aesthetics might broach a satirical bent. His first performance after all is played with some excess, the musical genius letting loose for the first time and wowing everybody beat; but particularly where he starts to shake his body and thrust his hips, the orgasmic response of all the women in the audience and how Luhrmann zones in on each one is pretty ludicrous. This tempers though, however the characterization of the Colonel remains quite some time difficult to take seriously.
Butler’s performance is quite good. He manages to find the human beneath the over-the-top persona of Elvis Presley and does great at keeping the momentum up throughout the turbulent career being showcased. Tom Hanks on the other hand is doing something very strange as the Colonel, a part that masks him in giant jowls, a fake nose, and a fat suit while he puts on an accent that might be his best attempt to mix the southern twang of Tennessee with the Dutch that the Colonel (an illegal immigrant without a passport or personal record) went to considerable efforts to hide. It doesn’t much coalesce though into something that sounds real, and in concert with his looks comes across as more of a Saturday Night Live caricature than what is effectively meant to be the villain of the piece. And it’s a shame because the Colonel on paper makes for a really good villain, one who scoops up Elvis when he’s young and vulnerable and proceeds to engineer and exploit every aspect of his career and image. Luhrmann has all the right instincts towards this, the dynamic between them makes for a great illustration of power and abuse over artists -yet only in rare moments can Hanks convey the gravity to that.
Irrespective of Hanks and some of Luhrmann’s blunt methods of coding their dynamic (the Colonel’s signing away Elvis’ future to Las Vegas as he performs “Suspicious Minds” for instance), that power exchange is the fundamental tenet of the movie -a different side of the rock star story amid all the conventions. It’s curious that a significant chunk of Elvis’ career is glossed over in favour of focusing more stringently on first his earliest years and then that late period Vegas residency. Luhrmann permits one scene depicting his time away in Germany and a montage allusion to his film career (as well as the subtle recognition that Elvis wanted more serious movie roles than he was ever given). These omissions feel both strategic for the sake of narrative and an unjust ignorance of touchstones from the height of his career. I think it mostly comes down to the pacing, which is inconsistent in the second act -several years pass by in rather quick succession and by the middle, Elvis is already a has-been; his unique sound already antiquated.
And let’s take a moment to talk about that sound, because the movie plays very methodically with Elvis’ relationship to black music and black musicians. Luhrmann makes quick to establish that Elvis’ musical inclinations have a direct root in the black culture he absorbed as a child in rural Tennessee. It goes so far as to actually show in flashback the child Elvis dancing with a throng of black people to “Hound Dog”, firmly acknowledging their ownership over that and other songs that Elvis merely popularized. There’s a sequence in Memphis, early into Elvis’ fame, of him hanging out in a small apartment club with B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola Quartey), and Little Richard (Alton Mason) -King even is the first person to cue him into the Colonel’s manipulations. And later he is immensely troubled by the assassination of Martin Luther King. The movie goes to lengths to emphasize his apparent kinship with the black community, to balance giving credit where its’ due while insisting on Elvis’ inherent “specialness”. And yet it never truly reckons with his appropriation -in fact it seems to excuse it by drawing these close connections. After a point we no longer see him interact with the black music community -except to express sadness at the death of Mahalia Jackson- nor do we see him uplift black voices; so his relationship to that culture seems ultimately shallow. That liberal portrait of the big important white guy who is a friend to black people but not an ally; whose activism begins and ends with a song, “If I Can Dream”.
That said, the “If I Can Dream” performance, impromptu at a Christmas show much to the Colonel’s consternation, is one of the musical highlights of the piece. In fact most of the songs are well performed and dynamically edited. It’s not often that Elvis truly conveys the behemoth sensation of its’ star but then he plays “Trouble” to a crowded field and Luhrmann composes it in a way that is palpably ground-shaking. This subject lends itself well to Luhrmann’s hyper-stylized sensibility, which especially in the musical sequences, the transitory devices, and the montages, is really inventive and exciting. The film has a vivaciousness to it for this, that dwarfs just about every music biopic I’ve seen, short of again maybe Rocketman. If the material of the film doesn’t keep you invested, Luhrmann’s sharp and colourful cavalcade of unreal visual tricks and glamour are sure to do it.
The movie could be accused of undercutting its’ cast apart from Butler and Hanks, most of whom are as per Luhrmann’s preferences, native Australians. Richard Roxburgh plays Vernon Presley while Olivia DeJonge is the young Priscilla in decently sized parts. But Harrison disappears as fast as he arrives, as do David Wenham, Luke Bracey, and Dacre Montgomery (and if you pay attention, you might spot Academy Award nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee for a few seconds). This it appears is a casualty of the film concerning itself exclusively (and probably rightly) with Elvis and the Colonel. And mismatched performance quality there aside, as well as the various tedious avenues of so many like stories that this movie is obligated to also partake in, it’s alright. Certainly more of an engaging experience than the common ilk of music biopics, and with a distinctly flavoured pomp and stylistic glitz to match the reputation of its’ subject. Elvis isn’t a bad movie. It’s not a great movie, but for yet another tribute to the King, it is oh so much more than expectation.
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