Elvis (2022)
Movie rating: 10/10
As an Elvis fan, there was always a good chance I was going to like this movie. What surprised me was how much I loved it. This isn’t the Elvis biopic I might have imagined, but something much more interesting and creative thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s unique directorial vision.
Luhrmann, it turns out, is the perfect choice to direct an Elvis film for 2022. If this movie had come out decades earlier, it likely would have been a far more standard biopic. In fact, we don’t have to imagine: there have been Elvis biopics before and they have been fairly traditional, from John Carpenter’s 1979 TV movie Elvis with Kurt Russell in the title role to the 2005 CBS miniseries starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the King. I’ve watched both and while they were enjoyable enough, there was something very by-the-numbers about them. They felt like exactly what you would expect from an Elvis Presley biopic, checking off all the boxes without feeling particularly special or unique.
Right from the start with Luhrmann’s Elvis, we realize we’re in for something different. Luhrmann’s style is flashy, in-your-face, deploying tricks from split screens to animation to rapid-fire montages. It incorporates anachronistic music in a way that somehow underscores both the period setting and story themes. I wasn’t sure how I would react to hip hop in a story about the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. But they merge perfectly into a soundtrack defined by its free-flowing nature—reminding me of the Beatles album Love that remixed their songs into a mashup for Cirque de Soleil.
Comparisons to a rock circus are apt, since Luhrmann’s film is told from the perspective of Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), a former carnival worker who describes Elvis Presley in concert here as “the greatest show on earth.” There are many angles that a filmmaker could take in presenting the life of Elvis Presley, but focusing on the relationship between Elvis and his Svengali-like manager has surprisingly never been done before on film. Arguably it’s a stroke of brilliance. Elvis’s artistic output was defined in large part by his relationship to Parker—which took the King to incredible heights of success, but also to some of the lowest points in his career.
Though Elvis himself has to take some of the blame for not exerting more creative control which led to so many missed opportunities, the Colonel played the decisive role. The wily Parker played on Presley’s fears, having grown up in poverty, that all the singer’s unbelievable success could vanish overnight. Colonel played a significant role in transforming Presley’s image from the sneering face of ’50s teen rebellion into a non-threatening family entertainer. It was in the moments when Elvis broke free of Parker’s control and interference that he achieved his greatest artistic successes, most notably his legendary ’68 Comeback Special.
That TV special took Elvis back to his roots, which as Luhrmann’s film makes clear were in interpreting the work of Black musicians—blues, gospel—and blending them with country and pop. Luhrmann brilliantly cuts between Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup performing “That’s All Right (Mama)” in Tupelo before a wide-eyed Elvis as a boy, to Elvis recording the song in Sun Studios in 1954, to Elvis performing the song live at the start of his Vegas run with backup singers and upsized band. We see how Elvis drew upon Black artists while adding his own unmistakable sonic imprint, and how he continued to evolve that sound over the course of his career.
Here’s where the hip hop on the soundtrack serves to underscore Elvis’s musical roots. For all the denigration of Elvis supposedly “stealing” the music of Black artists, the film shows Elvis as a poor white boy who grew up in a largely Black neighbourhood in Tupelo and later found himself drawn to Beale Street in Memphis. Elvis loved Black music and he never hid who his influences were. On the contrary, he befriended Black musicians like B.B. King and championed their contributions over his own. I appreciated how Luhrmann dramatizes Presley’s 1969 press conference in which he points to Fats Domino as “the real King of Rock ‘n’ Roll”.
Hip hop, like the blues that were integral to Elvis’s music, is a musical genre created by Black artists. Hip hop is also the most popular genre on the charts today. Just as blues influenced many non-Black artists like Elvis, hip hop has had the same impact more than half a century later. The Elvis soundtrack includes a tune by Eminem, who has faced similar charges of being a white musician that gained wealth and fame by performing “Black” music. On “The King and I”, he compares himself to Presley in greater detail than ever before.
Another non-Elvis song on the soundtrack is “Vegas” by rapper and singer Doja Cat, daughter of a Jewish-American mother and South African father of Zulu descent. Sampling Big Mama Thornton’s original recording of “Hound Dog”, Doja Cat disparages a lover who does not deserve her attention in terms not dissimilar to the lyrics of “Hound Dog”.
To me, the film and soundtrack stand as a rejection of the idea of “cultural appropriation”, or at least what that idea has become among proponents of identity politics. A scene where Elvis at the peak of his ’50s fame goes to a Beale Street bar to hang with B.B. King, watch a startling performance by Little Richard, and listen to Sister Rosetta Tharpe jam on guitar nails the joy of hearing and playing music you love—regardless of its origins.
The end logic of “cultural appropriation” and “staying in your lane” suggests that white people should only listen to music by white artists, Black people should only listen to music by Black artists, and so on. There’s a word for that kind of thinking: segregation. That’s exactly the system that prevailed at the time Elvis came to fame—including in music, where Black artists were relegated to so-called “race records”. But the greatest and most influential art throughout history has come from people mixing different influences to create something new, which is exactly what Elvis did.
Luhrmann’s film is completely upfront about the fact that due to systemic racism, as a white man Elvis was able to attain greater fame and fortune than the Black musicians who inspired him. When Elvis listens in awe to Little Richard sing “Tutti Frutti” and expresses his urge to cover the song, B.B. King tells him he would make a lot more money singing the song than Little Richard ever could. Compared to the earlier Elvis biopics, the 2022 Elvis depicts and emphasizes Black musicians to a far greater extent.
It also shows how the reason Elvis was perceived as such a threat to the social mores of ’50s America was not just because of his pelvic gyrations, but because his music crossed the colour line. In a racist society, a white man bringing Black musical styles to the mainstream was seen as outrageous, unacceptable. There’s a great moment in the film when Luhrmann cuts between Elvis defiantly busting out his wild moves in concert singing “Trouble”, and a speech by Mississippi Senator Jim Eastland (Nicholas Bell) shrieking about the dangers of racial integration in front of Confederate flags, shortly after he has seen his rapt daughters watching Elvis on TV. It’s not subtle, but subtle isn’t Luhrmann’s style. Nor, in many cases, was it Elvis’s.
Somehow I’ve made it this far in the review without mentioning possibly the movie’s greatest strength: the astonishing performance by Austin Butler as Elvis. When I watched Kurt Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, I thought both were fine, but at no point did I feel like I was actually watching Elvis Presley. Butler is on a whole different level, and only gets better as the movie goes along. He truly disappears into the role. Butler talks like Elvis and moves like Elvis so perfectly that at a certain point, you simply see Elvis. At one point when the movie flashes between footage of Butler and the real Elvis, it takes a few seconds to realize the change. Butler absolutely deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
Like the best performances by actors playing real musical legends—Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in Get On Up comes to mind—Butler does not merely imitate their mannerisms, but finds a real person underneath. In interviews, Butler has spoken about the moment he realized he and Elvis were both 23 years old when their mothers died, which gave him a starting point to get beyond Elvis the icon and understand Elvis the man. Butler also did much of his own singing for the movie. The work he put into his performance is clear and pays off in spades.
Tom Hanks has taken a lot of criticism for his performance as Parker, with many describing it as jarring and cartoonish. I had no problems with Hanks’s Colonel; Luhrmann’s style is so wild and over-the-top that Hanks blends right in. The supporting actors all do well, particularly Olivia DeJonge as Elvis’s wife Priscilla, Helen Thomson as his mother Gladys, and Kelvin Harrison, Jr. as B.B. King.
It might be an exaggeration to describe this as the Gospel of Elvis According to Priscilla, but it certainly feels like the Priscilla-approved version. This shouldn’t be surprising, given Priscilla’s role as co-founder and former chairwoman of Elvis Presley Enterprises, which has fully backed Luhrmann’s film. Priscilla comes off very well in the movie. Aspects of her relationship with Elvis that audiences might deem especially “problematic” are glossed over—such as the fact that she was only 14 years old when they first met while Elvis was 24. Two of Elvis’s significant girlfriends from the 1970s, Linda Thompson and Ginger Alden, are not mentioned, nor is his affair with Ann-Margret during the shooting of Viva Las Vegas. Even after their divorce, Elvis indicates that she is the love of his life.
But you know what? Priscilla, from what I can tell, really was the love of Elvis’s life (not counting his mother Gladys, played very well by Helen Thomson). Part of why Luhrmann’s approach works is that by not taking a standard biopic approach—with his flashy visuals, anachronistic music, and circus-like atmosphere—he makes it clear that this movie is less concerned with strict historical accuracy and more with visually expressing the story, the legend, and the sheer entertainment of Elvis. Luhrmann takes artistic license at many points, such as Elvis and the Colonel sealing their partnership while sitting on a ferris wheel. But it works because these are relatively minor details that express the essence of the facts in a more visually evocative way.
Despite Luhrmann’s ADHD style, the dramatic moments still hit. Thanks to Butler’s affecting performance, the decline and demise of Elvis becomes fully realized here as a genuine American tragedy.
Perhaps the most famous headline announcing Elvis’s death in 1977 was that in the Memphis Press-Scimitar: “A lonely life ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard.” Butler captures the magnetism and charisma of Elvis, his anger at the Colonel’s meddling, his attempts to achieve artistic independence, and finally his isolation and loneliness despite being beloved by millions around the world. Like Elvis himself, this movie is wildly entertaining, even kitschy, but has genuine power and heart. Next to the music and performances of the man himself and Peter Guralnick’s definitive scholarly biographies, Luhrmann’s film is the best case I’ve seen for both Elvis’s artistic greatness and his continuing relevance.