Starring: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Luke Bracey, David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Distributor: Warner Brothers
Runtime: 159 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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Baz Lurhmann’s musical drama follows the life and career of Elvis Presley through the relationship he had with his manager.
This film about Elvis Presley is based on a screenplay by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, in collaboration with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, while the screenplay itself is based on a story by Luhrmann and Doner. It sets out the life and career of singer, musician and actor Elvis Presley (Butler) from the time of his childhood to Presley’s career as a young adult when he became a musical sensation. The movie explores Presley’s life through the complex relationship he had with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Hanks).
The film is a highly energetic portrayal of Presley, which vividly chronicles the story of a rock icon. Typical of Luhrmann’s directorial style, the movie mounts its biopic in a lavish, extravagant fashion, akin in parts to his Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Moulin Rouge (2001). Luhrmann brilliantly uses split screen photography, and the fluid, colourful imagery that are his trade-mark.
Butler sings Elvis powerfully and in character, and swivel-hips Elvis’ performances in attention-getting style. His body gyrations distract a little from the impact of Elvis’ voice and his songs, but Butler’s Elvis is an energised version of Luhrmann’s fertile imagination at work. The film is a razzle-dazzle piece of cinema that aims to capture Elvis’ uniqueness, and it does that very well. Butler gives a charismatic performance that vividly projects the sensuality, that Elvis was famous for. His wildly physical performances keep Elvis’ sexuality way up front, and he nails Elvis’ sultry, individualistic drawl, which anticipates what Presley was able to deliver in the singing that made him a legend.
More sombre in ambition is the character of Colonel Parker, played by Hanks, who put on an enormous amount of weight for his role. Parker was Elvis’ manager for more than 20 years, and Elvis achieved his stardom over a span of time that witnessed substantial social and political change in the cultural landscape of America. Hanks not only acts Elvis’ manager, but narrates the film’s story. Colonel Parker is not portrayed in a favourable light, and Hanks illustrates dramatically how much Elvis’ manager shaped Elvis’ image to his own agenda, which included financial abuse. So convincing is Parker, that Hanks manages at times to pull attention away from Presley, the singing legend.
Especially interesting is Elvis’ stage performances in Las Vegas, where the brassiness of Elvis in Las Vegas starts to anticipate his decline, something which Colonel Parker was aware of, and continued to exploit. Elvis remained a fixture of the International Hotel in Las Vegas for more than five years in successive sold-out performances, while cultural changes in American society swirled around him, many of which affected Presley deeply and painfully.
Central to Elvis’ life was his love and dependence on Priscilla Presley, played impressively in the movie by DeJonge, who portrays particularly well the tempestuous relationship between Elvis and the young woman he married.
The production design and costuming in the film are exceptional, and musical numbers are choreographed as vibrant cinema experiences, full of energy. Luhrmann plays from time to time with viewer’s perceptions by explicitly showing viewers the real Elvis in voice and image, which makes the film an interesting kind of biopic: Luhrmann blurs reality and impersonation to convey glimpses of the identity of the person who really was Elvis Presley.
This is an ambitious film, directed creatively by Luhrmann with characteristic style, vibrancy, colour and panache. The movie has extraordinary energy, and Butler brings Elvis vividly to life.
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