Elvis

The name of a director can elicit memories and feelings from themselves and their various films. Spielberg and George Lucas remind me of some of my favourite childhood films, Hitchcock with tension, Denis Villeneuve of grand epic experiences and Baz Luhrmann with, erm, sheer... excess. The Australian director has given us visually splendid films with The Great Gatsby, Australia and Moulin Rouge (the latter I've yet to see) but to varying degrees of success. Romeo + Juliet is probably the best film of his I've watched and that came before he implemented greenscreens and CGI to make his visuals really pop but I feel something was lost in the process. In 2022 he released Elvis and now it was time to see how his treatment of The King would combine with Luhrmann's divisive style.

Much like a lot of recent musical biopics with Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, Elvis charts the story of the singer from his early days performing at small events with the help of his family, the rise to success with the dubious manager Colonel Tom Parker, the price of success and the eventual fall of the tragic individual. It's been done time and time again but how that story is told can be what sets it apart from the rest. And much of this story is told from Parker's perspective, the man who controlled Elvis with an iron grip and who believes he was unfairly vilified by the media. It's an interesting approach but one I would best summarise as messy.

Coming in close to 160 minutes, the film seems to have a lot to show but with very little to say and is excessively padded with numerous glitzy scenes, montages, remixes of Elvis' music but comes up short in offering a satisfying drama with only a few actual scenes sprinkled in. None of this comes at the fault of Austin Butler in the leading role who is terrific but I can't help feel that Luhrmann's style is all that and lacks the substance needed to do justice to this story. He does manage to convey that sense of tragedy though as we feel Elvis' fortune beginning to turn on him but with Tom Hanks' great performance undercut by the makeup department making him look like a comic book villain and the story just being so frenetic all the time, it becomes excessive and sadly, exhausting.

The film works best for me in the opening 90 minutes when the energy is flowing at the right level and while I enjoy Elvis' music, I feel this will work best for his fans and for fans of the director who will find plenty to revel in Baz's approach. To call this being 'as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle' seems overly harsh but it just didn't hit all the right notes for me and I hope we get another biography in the future that isn't afraid to take it a little bit more slowly and to let its scenes unfold without the noisy razzmatazz. The clash between wanting to explore Elvis' life and Parker's perspective, that remains half-baked, ultimately hinders this but not the very fine performance from Butler who is certainly a rising star to follow.