Elvis. (12A.)
Directed by Baz Luhrmann.
Starring Austen Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Luke Bracey, Richard Roxborough and Kodi Smit-McPhee. 158 mins.
Baz Luhrmann’s celebration of the King is definitely selling the sizzle, not the tray of hamburgers. Details and facts are casually brushed aside and the liberties taken are considerable. It’s long, restless and packed to bursting (don’t say “bloated,” don’t say “bloated") charging through his adult life in a manner reminiscent of Natural Born Killers-era Oliver Stone, throwing every trick and gimmick available – back projection, archive footage, animation, etc. at the screen. For anyone else you'd call it overblown, but this is Elvis.
Fittingly, it is at its best in the early pre-army days. The early montages which show the young Elvis immersing himself in black music, fusing the spiritual and the sexual, have a revelatory excitement. I’ve heard a thousand times about how young Elvis was a dangerous performer, but here you really see it. Elvis the Pelvis has become such a quaint joke, like What The Butler Saw machines. This is him as a menace to society, putting the wind up the establishment. The repeated close-ups on his wiggling crotch when he first performed initially seem crude, but they are spelling out to us what was being spelt out to all those screaming ladies.
In other places though the fabrications are too much. The filming of the ‘68 Comeback TV Special is conflated with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and rendered as a farcical comic set piece in which Col Tom Parker still thinks they are shooting a cosy Christmas special and is constantly reassuring the sponsors that Elvis is about to take off the leather jacket and perform Here Comes Santi Claus in a special Xmas jumper.
In a world full of impersonators, Butler gives a full and rich performance as Elvis without ever doing an impersonation. The film though tells his story through the voiceover of his evil manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Hanks from beneath a Jabba of prosthetics and with a weird Germanic Southern drawl, that seems to be largely of his own imagining. Hanks has struggled playing baddies before, but he is a convincing Fagin here.
Parker’s reputation gets trashed here and I can’t imagine any tears will be shed over that but if the film wasn’t quite such a fan letter to The King it might have been willing to explore some more awkward questions about their relationship and their dependency. It can’t really bear to say anything bad about its hero, or anything good about its villain.
It will be seen by many as facetious and superficial, but it captures the broad sweep of history and the larger truths. Elvis was the 20th Century’s most iconic figure. Well, him and Hitler. Both became parodic figures after their deaths, though some recently have tried not seeing the joke in Adolf. Luhrmann’s film may be silly in places but it does give Elvis back his potency, and his balls. It may be all a bunch is hooey really, but its truth goes marching on.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann.
Starring Austen Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Luke Bracey, Richard Roxborough and Kodi Smit-McPhee. 158 mins.
Baz Luhrmann’s celebration of the King is definitely selling the sizzle, not the tray of hamburgers. Details and facts are casually brushed aside and the liberties taken are considerable. It’s long, restless and packed to bursting (don’t say “bloated,” don’t say “bloated") charging through his adult life in a manner reminiscent of Natural Born Killers-era Oliver Stone, throwing every trick and gimmick available – back projection, archive footage, animation, etc. at the screen. For anyone else you'd call it overblown, but this is Elvis.
Fittingly, it is at its best in the early pre-army days. The early montages which show the young Elvis immersing himself in black music, fusing the spiritual and the sexual, have a revelatory excitement. I’ve heard a thousand times about how young Elvis was a dangerous performer, but here you really see it. Elvis the Pelvis has become such a quaint joke, like What The Butler Saw machines. This is him as a menace to society, putting the wind up the establishment. The repeated close-ups on his wiggling crotch when he first performed initially seem crude, but they are spelling out to us what was being spelt out to all those screaming ladies.
In other places though the fabrications are too much. The filming of the ‘68 Comeback TV Special is conflated with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and rendered as a farcical comic set piece in which Col Tom Parker still thinks they are shooting a cosy Christmas special and is constantly reassuring the sponsors that Elvis is about to take off the leather jacket and perform Here Comes Santi Claus in a special Xmas jumper.
In a world full of impersonators, Butler gives a full and rich performance as Elvis without ever doing an impersonation. The film though tells his story through the voiceover of his evil manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Hanks from beneath a Jabba of prosthetics and with a weird Germanic Southern drawl, that seems to be largely of his own imagining. Hanks has struggled playing baddies before, but he is a convincing Fagin here.
Parker’s reputation gets trashed here and I can’t imagine any tears will be shed over that but if the film wasn’t quite such a fan letter to The King it might have been willing to explore some more awkward questions about their relationship and their dependency. It can’t really bear to say anything bad about its hero, or anything good about its villain.
It will be seen by many as facetious and superficial, but it captures the broad sweep of history and the larger truths. Elvis was the 20th Century’s most iconic figure. Well, him and Hitler. Both became parodic figures after their deaths, though some recently have tried not seeing the joke in Adolf. Luhrmann’s film may be silly in places but it does give Elvis back his potency, and his balls. It may be all a bunch is hooey really, but its truth goes marching on.
