Elvis

Austin Butler in Elvis

Baz Luhrmann's artistic credo seems to drive him to turn all of his projects into glitzy musicals. His ostentatious, life is a carnival style reminds me of what Pauline Kael (I think) wrote about Alan Parker: he has style to burn and that is exactly what he should do with it. That said, Elvis provides Luhrmann with a suitable project containing good music, and it is his best film since Moulin Rouge. Yet, I was more exhausted by it than exhilarated.

Part of the reason is the scope of the film. Instead of focusing on a narrow slice of Presley's career, Luhrmann and his numerous screenwriters try to tackle the whole enchilada. Events whirr by and characterization, something often lost in the stars in Luhrmann's films, is meagre. Only Helen Thompson as Elvis' beloved mother is able to project a character and she goes to meet her maker far too soon. This is a problem for any author or auteur addressing what Greil Marcus called the Presliad. Elvis' life went pretty much downhill after the death of Gladys Presley. Even Pete Guralnick's outstanding biography becomes a litany of bad movies and prescription drugs after her death.

Luhrmann does himself proud in his presentation of the musical performances in the film. Glimpses of Little Richard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, and Arthur Crudup give a good background sketch of the musical influences that helped form Elvis. The influence of country music on Elvis is downplayed. The film's caricature of Hank Snow is overly broad and reductive. Luhrmann gives him a Southern accent despite Snow being from Canada.

Snow is in the film because Colonel Tom Parker was his manager before Parker glommed onto Presley. Elvis is presented from the point of view of a dying Parker, played by Tom Hanks. The failure of his performance is fatal to the film. An icon of decency, like Jimmy Stewart before him, Hanks is unable to exude greed, malice or even a hint of evil from beneath his prosthetics. Luhrmann wants the relationship between Elvis and Parker to resemble that of Faust and Mephistopheles. Instead, we get a waxworks Elvis and Mr. Rogers in a fat suit.

Austin Butler does reasonably well as Elvis. He does not embody Elvis with the ease of a Kurt Russell, but he is a more than reasonable facsimile of the real thing. In the cinematic oeuvre of Baz Luhrmann, one devoid of thematic depth and ambiguity, presenting a comprehensible façade of a character is the best a thespian can do. Still, Elvis could have been a lot worse. The kinetic drive of Presley's story and music is better suited to Luhrmann's sensibilities than the challenges of Australia or The Great Gatsby. While not a good or satisfying movie, Elvis has enough love and respect for its subject to satisfy fans of the King.