Elvis

No one does tacky opu­lence quite like Baz Luhrmann. He and Elvis Pres­ley – the King of rock ​’n’ roll and the bedaz­zled jump­suit – is sure­ly a match made in gar­ish heav­en. This bio­graph­i­cal film doesn’t show us the full scope of Elvis’ life, work and unprece­dent­ed influ­ence on Amer­i­can cul­ture. Instead, it opts to tell the fairy­tale version.

After a whis­tle-stop tour through the ear­ly influ­ences that would for­ev­er mark the life of Elvis Aaron Pres­ley – an impov­er­ished upbring­ing, a devo­tion to his mom­ma, the life­long influ­ence of black music – we are teased glimpses of the man who would become the King. A fore­arm, a magen­ta suit, a jet-black strand of hair, a snip­pet of a bari­tone Mem­phis drawl. Onstage, he came alive, his drip­ping sex appeal merged with a South­ern good-boy naivety that made audi­ences go fer­al for decades.

For­mer child star Austin But­ler plays Elvis with the sin­cere inten­si­ty of some­one try­ing very hard to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. The film takes great pains to show the phys­i­cal exer­tion of per­form­ing. Tens­ing, thrust­ing, drip­ping with sweat and the promise of a good time after the cur­tain falls, But­ler gets the moves, the voice and, most impor­tant­ly, Elvis’ charis­ma down.

What­ev­er flaws the film has, Butler’s Elvis is mes­mer­ic. While the film makes a big deal out of Elvis’ sex appeal, his ​“lewd gyra­tions and jerky move­ments” that made women go gaga, Elvis here is all smooth cor­ners. There is no room for explor­ing the con­tra­dic­tions, the thorni­ness of his rela­tion­ship with a teenage Priscil­la, his infi­deli­ties, pol­i­tics, or drug abuse. Any­thing that would make Elvis unap­peal­ing or prob­lem­at­ic by mod­ern stan­dards is tak­en out of the frame.

Through dizzy­ing mul­ti-split-screen mon­tages the film whizzes through the details of Elvis’ ascen­dan­cy into the main­stream. He sings, the girls swoon, and every­one gets rich. As his suc­cess grows, his cos­tumes get flashier and his side­burns larg­er. Elvis dreams of becom­ing a seri­ous actor while his face and name are mer­chan­dised mer­ci­less­ly and those hip gyra­tions incit­ing a moral panic.

Ulti­mate­ly, Luhrmann is not inter­est­ed in the details, but rather the fairy­tale. Every fairy­tale needs a vil­lain, and for Elvis, it’s his leech­ing long-time man­ag­er, Colonel Tom Park­er, played as an eye­brow-arch­ing car­toon vil­lain by Tom Han­ks encased in pros­thet­ics. The par­a­sitic rela­tion­ship between the artist and the man­ag­er – the for­mer too naïve to see he was being swin­dled and the lat­ter a corny Sven­gali milk­ing the Pres­ley cash cow to cov­er up his own debts – is too cat­e­gor­i­cal to say any­thing sub­stan­tial about the dirty deal­ings of the music busi­ness beyond Parker’s delud­ed plat­i­tudes and faux-father­ly manip­u­la­tions of Elvis.

We’re most­ly spared Elvis’ decline into a bloat­ed, sweaty croon­er – of course, that would ruin the fairy­tale. Rid­dled with debt, Elvis reluc­tant­ly con­tin­ues per­form­ing in the mau­soleum of a Vegas hotel until his death. There are infi­nite ways to approach a cul­tur­al jug­ger­naut like Elvis Pres­ley. Luhrmann rewrites him as a vic­tim of the Colonel’s greed and his own suc­cess, a good boy aching to do well by oth­ers and some­how always com­ing up short.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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