Elvis Review: Biopic Flows And Flies When The Music Is On And Austin Butler Turns On His Energy

Elvis: A still from the trailer. (courtesy: YouTube)

Cast: Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Rating: Two and a half stars ( out of 5)

The life of Elvis Presley gets a full-on Baz Luhrmann treatment. The result is a fast-paced, fragmented, breathless entertainer that is as much about the King of Rock and Roll as it is about the director’s all-or-nothing style of filmmaking. It is not always a happy union.

Early in the film, even as the voice of the one man who probably knew Elvis the best, Luhrmann splits the screen into eight equal parts to project the rock star in multiple situations. That sets the tone for the rest of the film. The pace and rhythm of the story has the feel of a split screen because so much seems to be going on in every frame of the overlong film that the mind is frequently hard-pressed to unpack the jumble.

But then there is the rousing music that elevates the film somewhat, compelling you to sway to its aggressive, insistent beat. And there is Austin Butler doing a fantastic impersonation of Elvis, at once unabashedly effeminate and assertively virile, and doing some of the singing himself. Butler’s performance works big time and holds the film together when it teeters on the edge of chaos.

Elvis isn’t Amadeus by any stretch of the imagination. It is not even Bohemian Rhapsody. It strays from the straight and narrow path that biopics usually favour. It is highly stylised and the details of the story are delivered in self-contained, whimsical snatches rather than as a run-on, smooth uninterrupted arc.

The cast includes Tom Hanks, whose character serves as the principal narrator. The actor plays Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ manipulative manager, as a complex individual who spots the spark in the singer, taps his enormous talent and helps a cultural phenomenon take shape. In the process, he never fails to ensure that he, too, makes a killing in the bargain.

The relationship between Colonel Parker and Elvis Presley is complex and the film does a decent job of bringing that out without resorting to broad strokes. Parker sees his association with Elvis as “my destiny”, knowing full well that it is a perfect opportunity for him to exploit a powerhouse of talent to satiate his greed – for money and success. Moving from the obvious to the ambiguous, and from the avuncular to the abjectly exploitative, Hanks’ interpretation of a man with deep grey shades has the depth that the character requires.

Overall, Elvis is a disappointment because despite the reverential celebration of the force that Presley was, the film meanders about far too much for its own good as it wends makes its way through the high and low points of an eventful life that defined a global phenomenon and produced “the most famous man on the planet”.

At one point, the screenplay written by Luhrmann with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner reveals that Elvis “was running from the day he was born”. If that is the reason why this biopic has a momentum that feels palpably rushed, it does not help matters.

That is not to say that isn’t anything to savour in Luhrmann’s Elvis. Its maximalist moorings notwithstanding, it does have its moments as a tribute to a music and movie star who impacted the world like nobody has done before or since. Elvis is undeniable when the music is on and Butler turns on his energy – the film flows and flies. Sadly, these passages are too few and far between.

Does Elvis have any contemporary relevance at all? It does, especially in the context of the fact that the singer was the only White man at Club Handy. His growing up in a poor Black neighbourhood shaped his music. The film doffs its hat to R&B musicians and, more importantly, to gospel legend Mahalia Jackson.

Elvis, which passes off locations in Australia as Memphis and Las Vegas, does pretty well to catch the Presley-era zeitgeist, a time of great turmoil for the US of A. The film incorporates the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Somebody says that the nation is hurting and “needs a voice now that will help it heal”.

Luhrmann’s film does not establish whether Elvis – he sings a protest song that triggers great excitement and he even says “when things are too dangerous to say, sing” – did heal the nation. What it does instead is present of a portrait that is more a haphazard palimpsest than a stencilled etching of the era.

The focus of the film is always equally on the manner in which Colonel Parker worked Elvis like a mule and drove him to the ground. If one were to judge the film on similar lines, it would be fair to conclude that Elvis would have benefited from a little more restraint and sobriety. The picture would then have been infinitely less blurry and far more memorable.