Review by Brad Balfour
Film: “Elvis”
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr., David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey, Dacre Montgomery, Leon Ford, Gary Clark Jr., Yola, Natasha Bassett, Xavier Samuel, Adam Dunn, Alton Mason, Shonka Dukureh
Long a master of the quick-cut, director Baz Luhrmann has made his reputation as a successful filmmaker by mostly making music-related movies full of bombastic, pumped-up scenes and hyped-up performances. A perfect example of this is 2001’s “Moulin Rouge” — one of his most creative and commercially successful ventures.
The Australian-born creator finds myth-making a large part of his movie-making. So having him tackle the tale of mega-star Elvis Presley’s meteoric rise and sad demise provides a brilliant opportunity for Luhrmann to take on the music legend and add to the mythologizing.
The real Elvis — the American singer and actor Elvis Aaron Presley — was dubbed the “King of Rock and Roll” in his day and was regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century. He emerged during the mid-‘50s — a transformative era in race relations which led to both his great success and initial controversy.
The youthful performer’s energized interpretations of the rhythm & blues songs that he grew up with — such as his early version of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” (Gary Clarke Jr. plays the Blues great). His family was so poor that they had first lived in the black district in Tupelo, Mississippi, — and later in Memphis, Tennessee — which otherwise would have been totally segregated. That environment propelled the music he absorbed which the teen soon introduced to white audiences. Coupled with his sexually provocative performance style, Elvis created a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines. At first, he stirred controversy in the South, then expanded his presence nationwide and finally, had a gigantic impact on the global stage.
Into those circumstances came huckster/manager Colonel Tom Parker who tried, at first, simply to harness Elvis and then, to straitjacket him into being a character that the performer didn’t really like. Parker exploited his talent for millions of dollars in record deals, films and all kinds of merchandise.
Born in the Netherlands, a 20-year-old Parker emigrated illegally to the USA. He changed his name, claimed to be born in the States, and hid his Dutch background. A former carnival worker, Parker moved into music promotion in 1938, working with popular crooner Gene Austin and then country music singers Eddy Arnold, Hank Snow, and Tommy Sands. He also assisted segregationist Jimmie Davis in becoming Louisiana’s Governor. As a reward, Davis gave him the honorary rank of “colonel” in the Louisiana State Militia.
When Parker encountered Presley in 1955, he found his ultimate meal ticket. By ’56, he’d become the singer’s sole rep and, in just a few months, won him an RCA Victor recording contract. That led to a commercial breakthrough for Elvis — his mega-hit “Heartbreak Hotel.”
In the racially conflicted America of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Presley charged up his youthful audiences — full of young women bursting with pent-up sexuality — through his deep throated vocals and gyrating hips. That made the Tupelo-born singer a megastar. Of course, this didn’t sit well with the powers that be.
With Elvis rising to become one of the world’s most popular and commercially successful entertainers, Parker grabbed more than half of his income, an unprecedented and much criticized move for a music manager. Besides negotiating Presley’s lucrative merchandising deals, TV appearances and acting roles in film musicals, Parker influenced Presley’s personal life, including decisions to accept military service in 1958 and to marry Priscilla Beaulieu in 1967.
After Parker encouraged him to make film musicals as the focus of his career, he also prompted Presley’s commercial decline in the ‘60s by having him shift from cultural provocateur to a safe and comfortable pop star. Once Elvis rebelled by making his rocking 1968 TV special, he enjoyed a comeback and returned to touring. Parker rarely saw him after that but had locked in his management role until Presley’s death in 1977.
Shortly before the real Elvis was about to start a tour, he was found dead in the bathroom apparently from a heart attack on August 16, 1977. At 42, after years of legal drug abuse, The King was gone. He went from being almost a comic self-parody to a further subject for pop culture idolatry.
What a perfect opportunity for Luhrmann’s amped-up style to be applied to this mythic figure. Since Baz loves to work in extremes — to Shakespearean proportions — his tragic hero needed an arch villain and Elvis’ late manager/svengali Parker (Tom Hanks) provided that to porcine proportions.
In various hyped-up ways
On the one hand, Luhrmann softened Elvis’s rough edges and displays of bad behavior but only when it served the myth-making. For example, in one scene near the end of the film, Elvis is lying in bed with a random woman he’s picked up, groggy from drugs. When he’s startled by a noise at his door, he grabs a big revolver, gets up and fires at the TV. Whether that’s how it really happened doesn’t matter. Baz’s version is created to make a point about who this character is and how he’s behaving — not to document actual fact.
From the start, in both Baz’s world and the real one, the creative storytelling began. Using animated cartoon images, he introduces the story of Elvis’ birth — on January 8th, 1935 — as a fantastical sequence of events. He’s the “other” twin who survives being born (while his elder twin is stillborn) and from the start, his legend kicks off.
The facts are there: yes, Elvis’ family did move into that black neighborhood and had more friends with dark skin than light at the beginning. Into this cinematic construct comes Baz’s versions of B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Little Richard (Alton Mason), Big Mama Thorton (Shonka Dukureh) and others. But the film pinions between those actual persons and facts and the imagined scenes of classic rock archetypes conveyed through Luhrmann’s fantabulous style.
How much Baz made up the “facts” of Elvis’ life or how much he used what really happened doesn’t matter in the end. What does matter is that Luhrmann tapped previously unknown actor Austin Butler to be his Elvis and Butler’s charismatic performance makes it all work out.
As the guy playing “The King,” Butler conveyed the passion and vitality of the youthful star —expressing the hormonal energy that was bursting out at the seams in 1950s America. And he had to also depict the enervated Elvis that mega-star eventually became. This was Butler’s big break and he had to make it work.
The 30-year-old had been around, having done some teen movies but didn’t enjoy much respect until Baz saw something in him. Ultimately Baz made the right move, marrying Austin with Elvis. The actor imbued the character with a smoldering pout and timely, gender-ambiguous mannerisms — and he captured Elvis’ twang as well. In a way, this parallel aspects of Presley’s own career.
The film is really about the dynamic between Butler and Hanks. Since Butler performed so well, Hanks pales in comparison. Meld that with Luhrmann’s determination to make the Colonel a devilish cardboard cartoon, and Hanks further comes off poorly. Only through Olivia DeJonge’s performance as Priscilla Presley does the film have a character that feels like a real human caught in a troubled relationship rather than being just another overblown mythic figure.
But Baz doesn’t really want to make a movie about real people. He actually loves cinema as a vehicle to create pop music-based myths. Presley provides a perfect platform for that. But since the film takes nearly three hours to get there, its flaws easily become apparent as the audience gets antsy.
Given that, the telling of the real Elvis Presley’s complex and tragically human story ends up suffering as a result. But hey, the movie rocks like a hound dog nonetheless.