Elvis (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Baz Luhrmann is back, baby, and this time he leans into the same artistic impulses that drove his utterly fabulous previous outing, The Great Gatsby. That is to say, he tells a very grounded story -- this time, based on one of the most famous and influential celebrities in the world -- with the same kind of visual and aural pizzazz that has made him the famed maximalist auteur of 21st century cinema. Many people know the Elvis Presley story, or at least parts of it, and so this movie might ring differently for those fans. I know precious little about his life or legacy; frankly, he's never really been a favorite artist to my ear. As such, this movie was a fresh and fascinating look into one of the earliest producers of what we now know of as "show business."

Elvis is told, interestingly enough, from the perspective of the villain of the story, his longtime manager "Colonel" Tom Parker, played by a deliciously nasty Tom Hanks in an uncharacteristically greasy role. He opens the film near the end of his life, near death in a Vegas hospital, surrounded by memorabilia and tchotchkes of fame as he narrates his reflections on his creation: the greatest show on earth. He wants to undermine the tabloids' claims of his fraudulent behavior and his management of the singing superstar whose untimely death left a void in the hearts of many fans. If Parker was a cheat and manipulator and crook, he's going to address that before his own demise. Hanks relishes this kind of role, though he has almost never embraced such seedy characters on screen before. He's kind of a nasty Santa Claus here, jubilant but watchful, eager to help young Elvis become a star as long as he can ride the ingenue's coattails to glory.

Right away, we see the effects of racism on the music industry, as a young Elvis (Austin Butler) leans heavily into Gospel and Blues music to find his voice. Montage after montage -- as only Luhrmann does best -- shows us the ways he studied, appreciated, and honored traditionally Black music in a time when he was not allowed to. These sequences will surely inspire heated conversations about appropriation on his part, but at the time -- according to the logic of this film -- he was simply creating music he loved like "Hound Dog" and wanted to share it with everyone; Luhrmann carefully intertwines Elvis's performances with those of Black singers in and around Beale Street to showcase the parallel environments in which this music was appreciated/appropriated. It's an absolutely fascinating first hour or so of this film, with more cultural knowledge (and fantasy) dropped in than any single viewer can handle.

And that's the Luhrmann trip, always, if you're willing to get on his wavelength. We could spend hours talking about how weird and unusual (but clearly having fun) Hanks is in this movie, or how Austin Butler is the hottest new actor in every possible way in the last decade and how effortlessly but bravely he carries the film, or how true to real life it all is. I'm enamored, however, by the director and his signature style, which is endlessly unique every time he provides us with a new vision. Of course, he combines so much into his vision that it's hard to parse right away, but it's all feeding into the same frenzied, fevered vision that makes him so utterly watchable. Serious discussions of homophobia and racism and capitalist greed and sexist workplaces breeze by while Elvis gyrates and vibrates his hips under hot pink slacks or slick leather pants and you're so caught up in the energy you forget this is a film and not a live concert experience from HBO.

Sure, the writing and dialogue could have used more work. While some characters are hopelessly flat -- Priscilla and his parents are barely even characters -- and scenes flip between times and locations faster than a strobe light, I barely noticed in the moment because Luhrmann and Butler cast such a dazzling spell together. Instead, I found my mind wandering repeatedly to the relationship between art and success, and how terribly things go awry when capitalism pushes artists toward labor and pay rather than ownership over their own brands. Even when the film, by its second half, moves into standard biopic territory -- the roaring crowds, sliding into private limos, doing drugs amongst the haze of stardom -- Luhrmann keeps surprising us with powerful renditions of familiar songs like "Trouble" and "Can't Help Falling in Love" in daring new contexts.

The lights of Vegas, and the deviously, bittersweetly named "International" Theater and casino/hotel, provide the kind of spectacle that Luhrmann harnesses better than any working filmmaker today. As the film reaches its denouement, Elvis ages dramatically until Luhrmann uses stock footage of his real-life comeback special before the final onscreen text and credits. It's telling too that by this point Elvis himself was starting to be claimed by a largely white audience, when so many major Black artists were the ones to support him in his early years, and Luhrmann seems intent to dare us to interrogate that trajectory of fame and "success." It invites us to consider the complex relationship generations of Black fans have had with Elvis, and it critiques the tendency of white folks to, well, appropriate until they forget the actual history (or commodify "the King" in service to nationalism and conservatism, much as President Nixon did). This is where Luhrmann's passion clearly lies in wanting to tell this story. Yes, his showmanship a la Moulin Rouge is the obvious pull for ticket sales, but his sensitivity and bravery in diving into the messier aspects of this story smacks more of Australia.

Anyone who decries this film for being itself racist or appropriating would do well to recognize the framing of the film from Parker's perspective. That in itself informs a lot of the proceedings, from the fabulous excesses of showbiz life to the general erasure of people of color from the Presley narrative. Luhrmann isn't creating a whitewashed or sanitized version of Elvis's life; he's showing literally how whitewashing happens and how dangerous and pernicious it really is. He's also making a damn good jukebox biopic for the ages.