Ori­on: The Man Who Would Be King

Elu­sive and haunt­ing are descrip­tions that fit this doc­u­men­tary and its sub­ject. Jim­my Ellis – the singer who sound­ed exact­ly like Elvis and nev­er stepped out of his vocalganger’s shad­ow – isn’t here any more. His life is recount­ed in stages. Talk­ing heads, footage of gaudi­ly dressed, charis­mat­ic per­for­mances, his son’s mem­o­ries and record­ings of his own mus­ings are organ­ised the­mat­i­cal­ly. The effect is of peel­ing back the lay­ers of an onion. But instead of a core, there are still more layers.

Jeanie Finlay’s inves­tiga­tive doc­u­men­tary is many things, but it is not an exposé. So, what is it? A eulo­gy for a man who want­ed to be more than a bizarre foot­note in the his­to­ry of Elvis imper­son­ators? Or a eulo­gy for a man with a sor­row­ful begin­ning and an even more sor­row­ful end, who filled the inter­im years with his twin pas­sions: music and women? The Ellis in old record­ings has an easy charm that thrives even though he is always wear­ing span­g­ly masks that evoke a dis­co-lov­ing high­way­man. These masks were the con­se­quence of a too trust­ing deal with an exploita­tive music indus­try shark.

After The King’s death, Ellis was relaunched as Ori­on, by a man­age­ment intent on cap­i­tal­is­ing on the Elvis lives myth. He was con­trac­tu­al­ly oblig­ed to wear a mask. Like a glitzy leash, the masks are a per­ma­nent reminder that Ellis is not his own man. At the peak of his pow­ers, no one knew his face. Fin­lay lets this bizarre real­i­ty and the infi­nite sym­bol­ic inter­pre­ta­tions pulse beneath all the euphor­ic archive per­for­mances. There is a shag­gy dog qual­i­ty to the way that Ellis’ life is pre­sent­ed because this is the sto­ry of a man that didn’t quite make it. The sto­ry of the man who would be king is the sto­ry of lives that mean­der, not end­ing in glo­ry, just ending.