Film Review: Elvis (2020)

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

Have you ever watched one of those TV specials that begins with a rapid and sweeping musical montage to give you a taste of the artist's life?

Now, imagine that montage going on for two-and-a-half hours and you now have the experience of what it was like watching Elvis.

Baz Luhrmann has always been a director who has valued style over substance.  It worked very well in Moulin Rouge! and moderately well in Gatsby.  It was awful in Romeo + Juliet.

Sadly, Luhrmann's directing style fails to make a good Elvis movie.

Most biopics have inherent challenges to telling a coherent narrative.  When writing about the entire life of a person, how do you encapsulate it in a satisfying three-act structure?  Movies like Lincoln side-step this problem by a selecting a snippet within that historical figure's life that could be molded to a satisfying story.

With Elvis, Luhrmann makes the same mistake that Spielberg did with The Post: he takes an incredibly interesting story and he tells it from the least interesting perspective.  

The movie is narrated by Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), the corrupt promoter for Elvis Preseley (Austin Butler).  It follows Parker's discovery of Elvis at one of his early concerts where his unique dancing style awakened the libidos of all the women in the crowd.  Parker attaches to Presley like a parasite and builds him up so that he could feed on him throughout his entire career until the king is bled dry.  

The best thing about this movie is Butler's performance.  It is probably the best interpretation of an historical figure I have seen since Daniel Day-Lewis' turn as Abraham Lincoln.  First of all, Butler inhabits the look, movement, cadence, singing, dancing, charisma, and presence of Elvis Presley.  He infuses him with that strange combination of danger and innocence that Elvis was able to project.  But that is only half of the battle.  If he had ended with a simple impersonation, then he there would be nothing to write home about.  But Butler makes Elvis a fully realized character.  He is constantly haunted by a loneliness that is hard to describe.  Butler shows us his utter vulnerability and heart while at the same time not shying away from his vices.  This is most important in his musical performances where he gives us the intensity that is needed to match the King.  His closer to the 1968 Christmas special had me rivetted.

The problem is that the movie never gives him the room to let the character shine.  To borrow a metaphor from The Cosby Show, Butler's performance is like an expensive steak presented on a the inside of a garbage can lid.  

Luhrmann is dazzling and dizzying in his style, but it is often overwhelming.  He has no confidence in letting the actors or the music carry the movie.  I didn't notice it until my wife pointed it out, but they almost never let us sit and hear an entire song of Elvis'.  Too often they chop it up or cut away to something else.  Scenes are truncated and move on at lightning speed.  If you've ever seen the pensieve seen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the movie moves with that level of rapidity.  It feels more like an impressionist painting: Luhrmann wants to present small images that leave the sense of Elvis's life without telling you an actual story.  He wants to connect Elvis' music with the primal call of sexuality with the transcendent ecstasy spirituality while at the same time connecting him to large social events like the assassinations of MLK and RFK as well as segregation and racial politics.  But so much of it feels forced and shallow that it never really digs in deeply to this character.

This is a real disservice to the other actors and characters.  I didn't mention most of them in the summary because I often don't remember them.  There were often moments where someone would have a serious and dramatic conversation with Elvis and I would turn to my wife and ask "Are we supposed to know what this person is?"  In fact,  

And I have to say, this may be a career worst performance for Hanks.  I understand that he was recovering from COVID and that Luhrmann insisted that he use a ridiculous accent that Parker did not actually have.  In addition to this, Hanks wore a fat suit instead of fluctuating his actual weight (which has caused him serious health issues).  Unfortunately, Hanks' Parker feels as artificial has his CGI characters in The Polar Express.  And as I wrote, it is such a narrative mistake to make Parker the focus of the movie.  In fact, most of the closing epilogue text is about Parker and not Presley, which feels like a complete disservice to Elvis himself.

Does the movie give any insight into Elvis?

That's a mixed bag.  I find myself singing his songs around the house.  As someone who has never been a gigantic Elvis fan, this tells me that it made an impression.  I get a sense of the trajectory of his career and the movie does a good job of showing the toll this took on his body, mind, and soul.  There is a sharp focus on the effect Elvis had on young women.  At a time when human sexuality was verboten in public discourse, Elvis presents an awakening of sensual desires that are scary and mysterious to the teenager girls of the day.  This would be more interesting if Luhrmann did not reduce Elvis to a sex object in the eyes of his audience.  Even those who are his male fans are clearly experiencing primarily attraction.  We don't get a strong sense of the fun or coolness of Elvis' songs.

But the movie portrays Elvis as an innocent victim of Parker.  It feels like Elvis has so little responsibility for his poor choices.  On some level, the movie is a Christian After School Special.  Elvis' mother (Helen Thompson) warns Elvis about the dangers to his soul by living this life.  And even early on the road, Elvis falls into fornication and drugs.  And he then makes a Faustian deal with his own devil in Col. Parker.  He gains the whole world and loses himself.  

Elvis' own vices and excesses are strangely excused.  At one point his wife Pricilla (Olivia DeJonge) tells him that she is leaving him.  When he asks if its about the women on the road, she says she doesn't care about these infidelities.  She clearly is uncomfortable watching him kissing dozens of fans on the lips, but she dismisses his dalliances as if it is nothing.  In fact, she complains that he is no longer intimate with her.  I don't know... if my spouse was sleeping around, I'd be worried what diseases they could be bringing into the marital bed.

Elvis feels like a bold experiment.  But the nature of experiments is that many of them are doomed to failure.  And that is the case here.

While this may make you appreciate Elvis the musician, it will not make you enjoy Elvis the movie.