{"id":1050083,"date":"2022-06-29T20:37:13","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T17:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1050083"},"modified":"2022-06-29T20:37:13","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T17:37:13","slug":"baz-luhrmanns-elvis-is-even-more-indulgent-than-you-might-have-guessed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1050083","title":{"rendered":"Baz Luhrmann\u2019s *Elvis* Is Even More Indulgent Than You Might Have Guessed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Baz Luhrmann\u2019s Elvis<\/em> Is Even More Indulgent Than You Might Have Guessed<\/h1>\n
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The director revamps the star\u2019s story into one of poisoned innocence and tragic na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2014but why?<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Allison Hussey<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Graphic by Marina Kozak<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In terms of unreliable narrators, few fit the bill like Colonel Tom Parker, the carnival barker turned music manager-manipulator who helped mint Elvis Presley\u2019s career and took a hefty cut of his own along the way. For the indulgent new biopic Elvis<\/em>, director Baz Luhrmann uses Parker as his primary framing device to show Presley\u2019s rise and fall. Tom Hanks, in a pile of prosthetics that rivals Danny DeVito\u2019s Penguin get-up, grouses in an odd, Dutch-inflected accent about being blamed for the star\u2019s 1977 death. As the 159-minute film lurches toward its final frames, Parker explains that Presley met his end as a result of love<\/em>. It wasn\u2019t fistfuls of Quaaludes, opiates, and other mood-altering tablets, nor booze or peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches: Presley felt the love of his fans, and in trying to love them back, he gave and gave of himself until he couldn\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n

Luhrmann poses Presley like some sort of jumpsuited Jesus Christ action figure, the one who had to die so that rock\u2019n\u2019roll could live forever. Austin Butler swings for his Oscar nomination with his portrayal of Presley as an intense, brooding, wistful star. There are multiple shots of Presley in profile, his head down, recalling both a familiar silhouette and giving the appearance of introspection. The 30-year-old actor casts hard blue gazes and blank stares, putting every ounce of himself into loaded lines about fate and the trials of fame. Between spells in flat-fronted trousers and an awkward fat suit, Butler fully embodies the singer in his tanned, virile mid-30s; he throws his body around one stage after another with complete abandon, singing some of Elvis\u2019s biggest hits and basking in his new stardom.<\/p>\n

Presley\u2019s rise padded him in crimson, satin, and velvet, heavy jewels and thick gold, congruent with the sumptuous maximalism that Luhrmann delivered in Moulin Rouge!<\/em> and The Great Gatsby<\/em>. As for Presley himself, Elvis<\/em> remains empathetic to the singer to the point of idolatry, maintaining Presley\u2019s na\u00efvet\u00e9 as a way to skate past opportunities for critical reflection or accountability. The movie\u2019s depiction of the singer\u2019s courtship with Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he married in 1967, is especially ick-inducing. Young Priscilla enters the picture as Presley\u2019s romantic interest while he was stationed in Germany at the end of the 1950s. Her \u201cteenage\u201d identifier in Elvis<\/em> doesn\u2019t paint the full picture: he was 24, she was 14. Kacey Musgraves\u2019 tinny spin on \u201cCan\u2019t Help Falling in Love\u201d plays as they kiss, a low point for all involved. As Presley\u2019s career and personal problems start to take off, Elvis<\/em> hews so closely to the typical dramatic boomer-music biopic plot points\u2014down to an angry wife screaming about pills\u2014that it becomes almost absurd. It\u2019s the kind of self-serious portrait of a troubled artist that the comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story<\/em> lampooned 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

In flashbacks to his childhood, Presley peeks through the tin-scrap walls of a Mississippi juke joint, intoxicated by the smoke, sounds, and bodies swirling within. Following the boy\u2019s gaze, Luhrmann\u2019s cameras rest lustily on the Black couple writhing in time to the music. From a young age, Presley is as transfixed by the carnal allure of sex as the possibility of a higher power. When fervent gospel music draws him to a nearby tent revival, he finds the spirit, and the Black congregation lifts little Elvis above their heads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Elvis<\/em> suggests that the singer simply loved Black music so much that he had absorbed it into his marrow. As a young man in his adopted home city of Memphis, Presley hangs out on the city\u2019s famed, and historically Black, Beale Street. Blues pour out of every bar, but Black artists who shaped Presley\u2019s creative life appear in Elvis<\/em> with the subtlety of pop-up book figures, with only Kelvin Harrison Jr.\u2019s B.B. King getting much time to speak on screen. Yola is gleaming (and underutilized) as Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Their time on screen\u2014as well as that for Shonka Dukureh\u2019s Willie Mae \u201cBig Mama\u201d Thornton and Alton Mason\u2019s Little Richard\u2014is so brief that the characters, some of American music\u2019s all-time greats, feel like tokenized Black Friends to keep the plot moving.<\/p>\n

The movie bluntly operates under the assumption that Presley was always acting with the best intentions for Black artists and communities in mind, but far overstates his capacity for meaningful social change. There\u2019s frantic, explosive energy in one Elvis<\/em> scene where Presley defies Parker and the Los Angeles Police Department vice squad by shaking his hips at a show, but Presley continued to perform for segregated audiences and largely kept quiet about the civil rights movement. The dynamics of money, race, and power in most of the singer\u2019s relationships otherwise go mostly unexamined. Elvis<\/em> makes clear that the \u201cking\u201d couldn\u2019t have ascended his throne without the influence of Thornton, King, Tharpe, and others. In many ways it follows through on a legacy; Presley made millions by taking songs that Black artists had already recorded and turning them into something that white people would buy.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a frustrating lack of demonstrating what<\/em>, exactly, Presley found so compelling about the music he spent his adult life retooling, much less the lives of the people who made it. Luhrmann gets closest to finding an answer when Presley is at church, tracing the ecstasy of the boy surrendering himself to \u201cI\u2019ll Fly Away.\u201d Though Presley did occasionally cross paths with B.B. King, the blues great never picks up a guitar in Elvis<\/em>. Instead, he gets fitted for nice suits and reassures a discouraged Presley on a Beale Street fire escape. In real life, King remembered Presley as polite and collegial, but his descriptions are nowhere near as warm as what\u2019s on screen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cUncomfortable racial tensions\u201d are not the kinds of flashy villains that help sell movie tickets, and so Parker becomes the catch-all instigator for Presley\u2019s ills. He\u2019s the big bad meanie who sets Presley up for failure as he tears through casinos like Godzilla of the Vegas strip. He racks up major debts and makes Presley an unwitting casualty to his manipulation, transforming Presley from a person into a product. Parker leers and tut-tuts and brokers sneaky deals with casino bigwigs while Presley sweats and preens on stage. All that sweet, innocent Presley wants is to make sure his mama\u2019s always happy and his daddy never goes to jail again. At least, that\u2019s what we\u2019re led to believe.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s true that Presley was crushed beneath plenty of unfair and unpleasant circumstances, his status as a white, male, money-making machine afforded him a layer of general safety that never would have extended to the people who had inspired him. But so, too, did this protective layer insulate Presley in poison. Elvis<\/em> returns to this notion repeatedly, hammering it when \u201cViva Las Vegas\u201d mixes with the strings of Britney Spears\u2019 \u201cToxic\u201d under the montage introducing Presley\u2019s \u201cMemphis Mafia.\u201d The crew ostensibly functioned as an entourage of security officers, friends, and advisors, but, with all of them being on Presley\u2019s payroll, they found ways to protect their own interests, too.<\/p>\n

More than any other modern director, Luhrmann seems to understand the high glamor and unfillable emptiness that accompanies glittering excess. If there\u2019s a \u201cmoral\u201d to Elvis<\/em>, it\u2019s to watch your money and avoid the sharks\u2014there\u2019s no deeper curiosity about the person who definitively established a mold for pop superstardom while helping to codify some of the music industry\u2019s most pernicious and exploitative tendencies. Presley\u2019s hours on the stage changed the very concept of entertainment for people all over the world, and Luhrmann revels in the spectacle. But for all of its sound and fury, Elvis<\/em> is an empty vessel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/elvis-movie-review-baz-luhrmann\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns Baz Luhrmann\u2019s Elvis Is Even More Indulgent Than You Might Have Guessed The director revamps the star\u2019s story into one of poisoned innocence and tragic na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2014but why? By Allison Hussey June 29, 2022 Graphic by Marina Kozak In terms of unreliable narrators, few fit the bill like Colonel Tom Parker, the carnival barker turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1050083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}