Elvis (2022)

To put it bluntly Elvis, a take-no-prisoners two-and-a-half hour onslaught of sight and sound, is exhausting despite the fact that there is little here that is new and much that, Luhrmannisation aside, is very familiar. The only thing that is really new (including imagined elements such as, I assume fictionalized, encounters with B.B.King and Little Richard) is the foregrounding of Elvis’s infamous Svengali-ish manager and former carny huckster, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who provides his version of the story via a voice-over although there is no real attempt to present the story consistently from his unprepossessing point of view.

Encompassing Elvis’s life from its beginnings in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1935 to his tragic death at his home, Graceland, in 1977, Luhrmann and fellow writers Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, are, to paraphrase John Ford, printing the Elvis legend. The problem with this is that whilst Luhrmann’s trademark hyper-kineticism (it is not until the end of the first hour when Elvis meets Priscilla that editors Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond hold a shot much longer than five seconds) was more or less justifiable by the fictional nature of Luhrmann's re-imaginings of literary icons 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Great Gatsby', for a biopic it leaves us no way into its, you've got to say fascinating, subject.

Much the same feeling of familiarity applies to the dutiful ticking off of the main shattering events of America society in the '60s that provided the backdrop for Elvis's music and career from the JFK assassination to the Sharon Tate murders and Altamont  Understandably, Elvis, a Nixon-admirer, was no supporter of hippies and commies and particularly as this is an “authorized” biography (I’m assuming so as the film’s finale, the real Elvis’s astonishing rendition of 'Unchained Melody', would have had to be licensed by notoriously tight-reined EP Enterprises) the film doesn’t really go anywhere near such matters.

This devotion to the legend rather than the man behind it may explain why, despite having the looks, the moves, the voice and the clothes and a fine performance, Austin Butler’s Elvis is curiously unconvincing.

The only point of real difference here is Tom Hanks’s Colonel about whom in real life little is known (as it is put in the film he was neither a Colonel, a Tom nor a Parker).  Presumably Hanks, the only well-known name in the cast, was selected as a box-office draw, but the fact that he spends the entire running time in a fat suit has drawn mixed critical response. Personally I found his pantomime villain an enjoyable creation if only for its against-type qualities.

As spectacle Elvis is marvellous, the furtherest Luhrmann has taken his love of exravagant showmanship. Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy's production design is fabulous, Mandy Walker’s cinematography splendid, the music a brilliant mash-up of old and new.  But the film is far too long. It could have ended with Elvis's triumphal Vegas run (tho’ retaining the “Unchained Melody” number as a summing up) and the take-home value would not have been less. Indeed given that its boomer audience would be home three quarters of an hour earlier it might have been better.

The film ends with a pious closing statement to the effect that Elvis continues to affect popular music. Exactly how this is so is not stated or shown. Perhaps had Luhrmann the claim and given millennials an appreciation of him beyond the easy 'fat Elvis' jokes. As it is, as a state-of-the-art time capsule Elvis should by-and-large please its largely predetermined audience. Like it or not it deserves being seen on the big screen.

FYI: Kurt Russell played Elvis in John Carpenter's 1979 televisual Elvis.  For an amusing spoof of an Elvis-like origin story see Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story  (2007).

 

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