It isn’t until the last half hour of Priscilla that any Elvis music is heard. Because until that point it is hardly relevant. Elvis Presley features obviously as a big part of this movie, but he and his music are not its central focus. The fact that his celebrity is only manifested in passing is part of the point –it’s not the Elvis Priscilla Wagner knew, even as it was the Elvis whose shadow she lived in, the Elvis that informed how her Elvis treated her. It’s fitting that the music starts as the groundwork has been laid for their split, where they are more distant than ever.
Sofia Coppola was absolutely the right person to make this movie, based on the 1985 biography by Priscilla Presley, who serves herself as an executive producer on the film. She really specializes in movies about the various boxes women are consigned to, most of the time by powerful men –films like The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled, even to some degree Lost in Translation. She seems possessed of a unique understanding of the effect Priscilla’s relationship to Elvis had on her and has the creative acumen to illustrate it on a profound cinematic scale.
She cast Cailee Spaeny, exceptionally convincing in her youthfulness, as the fourteen-year-old girl who meets her rock ‘n roll idol in 1959 and is singled out unpredictably as an object of his affections. Elvis himself is played by Jacob Elordi, who bears little physical resemblance to the King, but whose towering presence (emphasized literally by his daunting height) casts a shadow of influence and inevitability around her. At their first meeting at a party on a military base where Priscilla’s father is stationed, he is palpably compelled by her young age. On their second, he invites her up to his bedroom –but critically only for some innocent kissing. He intentionally withholds sex with her for years, and yet all that time insinuates himself more and more on her impressionable sensitivities.
So often is their age difference brought up by those around them, Coppola making a point to contrast things like a weekend in Vegas (where Priscilla tries a little bit of cocaine) with her high school attendance the following day. She also makes clear the one-sided power dynamic of this relationship, where Elvis can go off for weeks at a time, keeping vague the details of whatever performance or film he’s shooting -while Priscilla, confined at home in Graceland, can only powerlessly read about the rumours of affairs with the likes of Nancy Sinatra or Ann-Margaret, each of which he casually denies while subtly gaslighting her over her concern with them.
Coppola and Spaeny likewise succeed at immersing the audience in Priscilla’s perspective as her gradual disillusionment manifests distinctly over a period of about fourteen years. The anxiety of her early encounters with Elvis are coupled with a glowing sense of pride and unearned maturity -Elvis does indeed a couple times assert that common refrain of the sexual groomer that Priscilla is “very mature for her age”. The movie hones in on what comments like these mean to Priscilla, amplifying her sexual eagerness and consequent frustration -but through these even further dependence on Elvis. Eventually, actual consummation on their wedding night passes without remark -by that point the novelty of the romance has begun already to wear thin.
The way that space is used in this movie is deeply interesting. How Priscilla moves in to Graceland and is enraptured by its wealth, and Elvis’ lush and fancy bedroom especially; only for that room to resemble more and more a prison over time -as she remains trapped within its dark contours and shallow refinement. She cannot go outside, it attracts the paparazzi; she cannot mingle with the friendly women who take in Elvis’ fan mail. Coppola’s gift for visualizing solitude and feminine boredom, reflective of the monotony of patriarchal strictures, is on full display here. From the miserly emptiness of the mansion she is confined to to the lonesomeness at her school where classmates whisper behind her back and are only interested in her as far as her connection goes. The general thesis is epitomized plainly: this is a girl whose life and potential for independence was stolen, and the trade-off of celebrity and wealth was not worth it.
Elvis is not an absentee figure from her life though, and the relationship is explored with a shrewd consideration. It is not a one-note portrait of an abuser, Elvis’s charisma does come out in Elordi’s performance. So too does his darker, more controlling side in spurts. The way he casually vetoes Priscilla’s fashion or hairstyle choices if he doesn’t much like them, backed up as always when not in the bedroom, by his posse of loyal followers -who create even more pressure for Priscilla. During one sequence, where the pair are in the bedroom for several days at a stretch (though again not sexually active), an intoxicated Elvis hammers Priscilla with a pillow in response to an unknowingly offensive comment. She locks herself in the bathroom while he implores her outside, insisting he “wouldn’t hurt her” as the camera frames him towering over the door in a shape not unlike a classic movie monster. The movie never goes off the rails with this equation, but it does signify pointedly the way that Priscilla at times was obliged to see her husband. It’s no coincidence this visual language returns in the action that immediately precedes their break-up.
Doubtless the image of Elvis in this movie is uncharitable, though by no means excessively derogatory. And naturally, this movie invites comparison to Baz Luhrman’s glamourous unexpected Awards-contending monstrosity from last year, which did present a highly positive depiction of the legendary singer -a tragic figure to that films’ lens, brought down by his overbearing manager. This movie is on the whole much better -even as it lacks the propulsive style and energy of the other, employed more compellingly there than Coppola’s minimalism is here; but Priscilla doesn’t wholly contradict Elvis. In fact, together the films present an interesting picture of how controlling personalities beget one another: the Colonel’s abuse of Elvis manifests in Elvis’s abuse of Priscilla.
But again, this isn’t Elvis’s story -and Coppola honours Priscilla and the complex nature of her situation as best she can. However you feel about the authenticity of her account -and I’m inclined to take her word- there’s a visceral emotional honesty at play, informed by a deep understanding of the psyche and confusion of a girl thrust uncomfortably into the limelight at the whim of patriarchal forces beyond her control. Again, it’s a movie Coppola was particularly well-suited for, and it’s maybe her best in years.
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