Mark Reviews Movies: ELVIS

Elvis, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 23, 2022

Co-writer/director Baz Luhrmann's Elvis is technically a biography of the iconic singer, in that it details his life—from his childhood until his death—and his career—from hitting it big on local radio airwaves to becoming arguably the biggest celebrity in the world. It's less about the details of the man's life, though, and more about the spirit of him as a performer.

Luhrmann's style is relentless in its sense of forward momentum, even when it pauses for flashbacks and flash-forwards, and the dynamism of its camera work, which whirls and twirls with no other consideration but to keep moving. That was the life of Elvis Presley in a way, and if only for that reason, Luhrmann's film captures some essence of the star's life in a way that a more traditional approach might have missed. Like Presley, this film burns brightly and intensely for a stretch of time that feels both considerable, because the film is almost three hours in length, and too hasty, because Luhrmann's tactics ensure that there's barely any time for the story to breathe.

Some of the ideas and conceits here are intriguing, if half-cooked, and at least one of them is a huge mistake. In terms of the former, we have the soundtrack, for example, which features plenty of Presley's songs (although not as many as one might expect, considering how much time the man spends on stage) but, for certain non-performance moments, occasionally remixes them—in a way that recalls their origins in blues and suggests their influence on the future.

"Hound Dog" gets Presley's treatment, but we're first introduced to Big Mama Thornton's version, before scenes of Elvis, walking by the shops and clubs of Memphis' Beale Street, are accompanied by a mix of both of those iterations and some rap riffs. Presley might not have been a necessary musical bridge between rhythm-and-blues and rap.

On a societal level, though, there might be something to the film's implicit argument that, without Presley helping to popularize historically Black music across the country's racial and geographic divides, the scope of popularity within modern music would be much different. This, of course, ignores the counterargument that Presley appropriated or outright stole the work of Black musicians for his own fame. However, that's not this film's case to make or much consider (The film's treatment of the civil rights movement, with its Elvis as a silent but defiant champion, is so awkwardly unconvincing that it's best left at that).

The music does matter here, though, more than any other element of the narrative, and that's the way it probably should be. It's almost constant, on the soundtrack during transitions and montages, as well as during the multiple scenes of this film's Elvis on stages across the United States. The singer, by the way, is played by Austin Butler, who is essentially doing an impersonation of the King without much internal depth, but that, too, fits in perfectly with Luhrmann's intentions.

It's a significant impression, as well, that gets the Tupelo drawl right, but when Butler is up on those stages, he channels Presley's physicality, presence, and primal sort of pure charisma. This is a performance, ultimately, that transcends mere impersonation. It gets at the core of Presley's complete dedication and particular appeal as a performer—partly musical and partly sexual, if all those screaming girls and women are any indication (In the first big performance scene, Luhrmann gets a kick out of intercutting between Elvis' wiggling hips and women's faces experiencing a certain awakening).

For the most part, the screenplay (written by the director, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner) recalls Elvis' life story in a semi-traditional manner, beginning with the start of his career, with a couple flashbacks to his youth sneaking in to listen to blues players and revival tents. From there, we get his quick rise, his slow declines from political attacks and changes in musical tastes, his sudden comeback, and his final years as a staple of Las Vegas, injected with pharmaceutical concoctions and addicted to pills to keep him going—until his heart finally quits.

In between, there are glimpses of his family life—his doting, beloved mother (played by Helen Thomas) and his easily manipulated financial manager of a father (played by Richard Roxburgh)—and marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge). Such personal moments matter to some degree, but they're lost amidst the rush to get Elvis back on stage. In terms of the film's sense of propulsion, that's a description of a filmmaking choice, not necessarily a criticism.

The major beats of this tale are narrated by his constant and mysterious manager Colonel Tom Parker, who turned out to be none of those things—neither "Colonel" nor "Tom" nor "Parker"—but almost certainly was instrumental in Presley's downfall. The idea of this framing device is fine, but the casting of Tom Hanks in that role is the film's most blatant mistake. Hanks adopts a vaguely European and often unintelligible dialect. Additionally, the layers of added-weight and aging makeup are only further distraction from a character whose enigmatic, falsely sincere, and deeply sinister nature shouldn't be a joke. The terrible thinking behind the casting and Hanks' physical transformation unfortunately turn the character into one.

Despite that major flaw and some unformed or clunky notions about the icon's cultural impact, Elvis is a big, bold, and just-unconventional-enough piece of biography. It doesn't attempt to get at the heart of the man offstage, because the film is smart enough to know that we want Elvis the performer and that his heart was always on the stage.

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