I Like to Watch | Elvis (2022)
I remember clearly exactly where I was the day that Elvis Presley died.
This is not because I was a fan of him or his music. I was in seventh grade and my musical tastes, while a bit retro for the time, never really dug into the career of 'The King.' No, it was my mom. She was one of those girls who screamed, who passed out, who seriously thought about jumping on him at a concert. When I heard on the radio he had died, I called my mom at work to tell her. She got very quiet, hung up, and closed the office she was working at. It was a truly sad day for her.
I didn't become a fan of the man until years later when I decided to take her to Graceland. Both smaller than I imagined yet more amazing than I thought, Elvis's home contained a fuller picture of him than I had been exposed. A philanthropist, a mentor, a hero in his own right, all along the fact that (even to this day) he was the most successful solo performer in history.
Once mom and I returned from that very special Mother's Day trip, I did a bit of a deep dive into the man. I was fascinated by this larger than life figure I had ignored up to that point so I listened to the music and read about his life. Most of what had been written was in the same vein as Greek mythology. Elvis Presley as the legend rather than a country boy who, through musical and cultural osmosis and the presence of a dyed-in-the-wool showman huckster as his guiding light, became the undisputed King of Rock and Roll.
Much has been made of the fact that black artists were performing regularly the kind of music Elvis put forth to the world, the arguments of cultural appropriation (long before that academic term came to popularity), and that Presley stole the musical styles of black culture to cash in with his mostly white audience. On its surface, the suggestion seems reasonable. A more nuanced look reveals the argument is bunk.
Presley grew up in a predominantly black area, was heavily influenced by gospel music on the black side, country and folk music from the white side, and eventually R&B from black geniuses synthesizing a kind of music previously unheard. Rather than an appropriator of any one genre, his music was a blend of all of these styles and specifically his performance elevated the worldwide popularity of a completely new, made from pieces of others, phenomenon. The accusation of appropriation is one of intentional ripoff for financial gain; Elvis became Elvis by marinating in the cultural sounds of his upbringing. It’s arguable that he couldn’t make any other kind of music even had he tried.
Years later, when I caught news that director Baz Luhrmann was coming out with a movie about Presley, I was almost as excited as I am for the next MCU movie.
Luhrmann loves his fairy tales. His films truck in the larger-than-life. He started his career in theater and his films reflect a more theatrical design. Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge!(2001), Australia (2008), and The Great Gatsby (2013) all have a lush, saturated fairy tale feel. The characters are outsized and exaggerated. For Luhrmann, love is a gilded word, courage is a remarkable choice, heartbreak is a vicious death. His style is as brilliant and infuriating for some as is that of Wes Anderson or Charlie Kaufman.
Of course, he decided to do an Elvis biopic. But it isn't strictly (or even peripherally) a biopic. Elvis is a fable as told by an unreliable narrator.
"Colonel" Tom Parker, as portrayed by Tom Hanks underneath a mountain of prosthetics, is the villain of the tale who narrates it with an eye toward effectively placing himself as the hero. Hanks is an odd choice, given that you simply cannot forget that, despite the bizarre Danish/Southern accent, W.C. Fields nose, and giant bad-guy hat, this is America's Dad. On the other hand, this casting creates an instant distrust of everything the character says because he is so obviously not who he says he is. Whatever the justification, after the jarring effect in the first ten minutes, it ended up working for me. Hanks as Parker felt somehow more theatrical than cinematic.
Less an authentic chronology of the rise and fall of Presley, the film is more of a slant on his history (avoiding his more conservative leanings and cozying up to Richard Nixon as well as a bit of a ham-fisted approach to the black musicians by whom he had been influenced) and a triptych of Elvis's greatest moments. His first foray into turning a crowd of young women into screaming animals, his infamous 'new' Elvis singing to a Bassett Hound on TV, the 1968 comeback special, his residency in Las Vegas. This is myth-making in technicolor.
The true revelation in this is Austin Butler. His performance (especially the musical sequences) are almost otherworldly in his amazing clairvoyance summoning Elvis. It's simply extraordinary how the actor completely embodies every move, shake, twist, snarl, and flourish of The King. The sequence of Elvis building the opening number for his Las Vegas debut is among one the best imaginings of the man I could have wished for. I’ll purchase the movie just to watch that scene.
That said, there’s less of Elvis performing in this film than not. That could be a knock but it isn’t. The quality of those performance sequences are so incredibly rendered, too much might tip the story and, after all, this is the telling of his story from the villain’s perspective.
Like The Greatest Showman—a movie musical that completely reframes the huckster P.T. Barnum into an equity-chasing social justice type—this is not intended to be an accurate biopic. It is a meditation on the legend that was Elvis Presley. It's a celebration of grift and bullshit with Butler showing us why it all worked in the first place. Far more in line with Moulin Rouge! than Bohemian Rhapsody or Walk the Line, Elvis is a fantastical mural painted on a wall to be thrilled with or infuriated at and can you expect anything different from Luhrmann?
