“Unchained Elegy”
Film Review for Northern Express, Published July 11, 2022
Messier than the favorite peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich of its iconic subject, Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s musical opus Elvis is an earnest and postmodern biopic of the King of Rock n’ Roll that sadly fails to create a true emotional bond with the audience, despite having a lengthy 2 hours and 39 minutes to try.
This is not to say the film lacks any enduring qualities. In fact, it’s well worth seeing (ditch the beverages) if only to watch the near reincarnation of Presley in the wildly talented portrayal by thirty-year old actor Austin Butler, who also sings beautifully in some pivotal scenes.
The hyper-kinetically paced moral fable is laid out in dizzying fashion in the film’s opening montage, which I can only describe as the sensation of being a pinball launched into a multi-dimensional machine. Director Luhrmann (who brought you like-minded over the top fare previously in Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby), steals and combines inspirations from Broadway musicals, comics and graphic novels, the social media metaverse, and even the Bible in explaining how a young poor white boy from Tennessee who wanted to be a superhero grew up to become the most successful solo entertainer of all time.
The unreliable narrator of this Dante-Meets-Beyoncé inferno of good vs. evil is the man who discovered and created and managed Elvis his entire career, Colonel Tom Parker (a showman from the carnival circuit who brings his medicine-man style and greed to everything he touches). “The Colonel” offers Elvis the forbidden fruit of promised fame, and he doesn’t take much nudging to bite. This lifetime pact of codependency, around which the entire story is set, takes place at the top of a ferris-wheel with Colonel Tom and his clown-headed cane facing down a young and nervous Elvis, who admits in that quintessential drawl, “I think I could be special too.”
As the hustle to brand and monetize Elvis begins, the metaphorical angel on his shoulder is the singular presence of good and pure love in his life — his mother. So important is this bond that the film’s first scene that actually stops and lets the audience catch its breath is the pivotal moment when Elvis sets off with Colonel Tom and crew to hit the road, choosing the dangerous path over the straight and narrow. “Momma” is worried and devastated, and begs him to remember who he is and where he came from (something that would become a lifelong struggle for the man who lost his twin-brother at birth, and carried the weight of guilty responsibility to make his life count).
In a tale as old as the temptation of Christ, from there it doesn’t end well. As Elvis’ fame and fortune grow, there is never enough to satisfy and fulfill all the desires of his Memphis mafia of family and friends (in part because so much of it is deceptively funneled to Colonel Tom, who uses his cash cow to pay off and fuel his gambling habits). It becomes harder and harder takin’ care of business. There are chapters of booms, periods of big busts and expanding waistlines, and confrontations and showdowns between the two lead characters (and only ones with much dimension or screen time).
While Butler’s version of Elvis is riveting, Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom is fatally-flawed. (That the film’s screenplay took six credited writers to complete is only part of the problem). It’s simply impossible to take Hanks seriously, despite every fun-house mirror and make-up trick in the cinematic books. His inconsistent accent, child-like villainy and celebrity-familiarity are all impossible to overcome.
The racial history and complexity of the true story are also treated with similar lack of nuance here; neither making the case for Elvis and his lasting flinty influence as an artist who bridged cultures, nor damning him for his co-opting of Black music. It’s an intentionally color-blind studio approach designed to appeal to the widest net and least controversy.
Boomers beware, this may not be what you’re expecting unless you love watching a mash-up of your favorite Elvis hits alongside hip-hop mixes and Tik-Tok style rotoscoping. But there are also moments of pure imaginative joy at play here too, where Elvis becomes human again and reminds us “… there are things in life that can’t be said, man. That’s why we’ve got music.” And movies too.
