'Elvis' Review: Baz Luhrmann's Dazzling, Bombastic Style is Fit for a King
Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in ELVIS.
“Anything that is too dangerous to say: sing.”
June, 1956. A young new performer named Elvis Presley appears on the Milton Berle show shaking his legs, thrusting his hips, and stealing the hearts of millions of Americans. Elvis was the epitome of cool—the rebel, the mama’s boy, the well-mannered kid from Mississippi. He had a voice and a style that was unmatched. He took the charms of a crooked-grinned man and combined them with the rockabilly moves of his contemporaries. The way that Elvis evoked virtually indescribable feelings from his fans revolutionized him as a god—the King of Rock n’ Roll. Images of Elvis are synonymous with glitz and glamour, flashy, bedazzled jumpsuits, and undeniable style. So, who better to take on the task of telling his story than director Baz Luhrmann?
The film was a long time coming—not only in terms of development, but because it was one of the first major studio films to be severely delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most famously, star Tom Hanks caught the virus while filming the movie in Australia, thus halting production while he recovered. The wait was more than worth it as the final product is a truly dazzling achievement. Coming in at nearly three hours long, the film documents Elvis’ life and career from his early exposure to music as a young boy, all the way to his death in 1977, all from the perspective of his infamous and long-time manager, Colonel Tom Parker. A quick Google search on Elvis will lead to mixed opinions on the Colonel. He is most notably criticized for taking 50% of all of the star’s earnings while simultaneously credited as the one that made him a household name. To this day, Elvis Presley remains the second highest-selling solo artist of all time—but at what cost? That very question is what the movie explores.
Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker in ELVIS.
One of the strongest and most definable characteristics of a Baz Luhrmann film is his quick, jarring, and montage editing style. Despite the movie being quite long, this technique enables Luhrmann to quickly jump through time, layer multiple themes and ideas, and keep the audience’s attention to the point that it’s almost impossible to look away. With a life and career as illustrious as Elvis’, this was a perfect way to coast his audience through a brimming timeline. The film uses this concept almost right off the bat at a pivotal moment in Elvis’ childhood where he feels compelled to move by the spirit in church is juxtaposed with both a striking R&B barnyard jam session happening nearby and a nervous Elvis of the future getting ready to go perform on stage. It is invigorating, emotional, and places you in multiple stages of his life simultaneously. These montages and juxtaposing moments continue especially through the first third of the film as the singer begins to skyrocket to fame.
Much of Colonel Tom Parker’s legacy is as much myth and hearsay as it is verifiable truth. Parker was a citizen of no country and had his birth name legally changed after he got out of service. He had a loosely wavering Dutch accent (heavily exaggerated by Hanks as Parker in the film), a one-track mind for business and profit, yet was recounted as warm, trustworthy, and familial to those that knew him. Hanks seems to play an overdramatic version of Parker, feeling more like a caricature than a real man throughout most of the film. While at times he comes off as sincerely menacing and self-involved, he almost comes off as a laughably evil villain at other times. It’s hard to decipher if that serves the film—perhaps Parker seems just so obviously bad that it’s easy to sympathize and emotionally connect to Elvis as the protagonist—or if it just feels a bit too on the nose and ultimately distracts from the story at hand.
Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in ELVIS.
Undeniable in his performance, though, is star Austin Butler as the hip-shaking singer. Butler went full-force into preparation for the role, watching countless hours of old concert footage, studying and recreating the tone and nuances of Elvis’ voice, learning his songs and working with a vocal coach, and copying his movements so much that he practically adopted them as his own. It’s impossible to look away from Butler with every frame that he’s on screen—not only because of the charm, good looks, or performer’s magnetism—but because he so completely immersed himself in the role that one truly feels like they’re looking up at Elvis Presley. The swagger in his walk, the raise of his eyebrow, the dimple-donned smiles and the pink pursed lips all mimic the singer so exactly that it becomes easy to forget that it’s an actor giving a performance in a film. Despite only being mid-way through the year’s films, it seems like Butler is the front-runner for the Oscar and most definitely the one to beat.
The film, as mentioned, jumps around through many pivotal moments in Elvis’ life and primarily takes place between the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The ever-changing landscape of the decades loans itself perfectly once again to Luhrmann’s flashy and exuberant directorial style and fills the screen with bright, beautiful colors, sounds, costumes, and sets. Whether it’s the early big-band stages that Elvis would play on in the beginning of his career, to the eventual move into his famous Memphis home Graceland, or to the setting of his 1968 Comeback Special, Luhrmann taps in to what he does best and makes everything feel larger than life—just like Elvis himself seemed to be. Perfectly intertwined throughout all the silk and rhinestones are incredibly powerful emotional beats that never fail to be overlooked. Whether it’s the audience beginning to see Elvis struggle—either through his failing marriage which he’s saturated with infidelity, his manipulative and constricting relationship with the Colonel, or his declining health at the hands of a doctor who is over-medicating him—or the impact of the various social phenomenons of the times, and especially the moments where the music was the thing that mattered the most—it’s impossible to watch this film and not be completely bought into everything that’s happening. Luhrmann and his actors create a throughline so strong and so empathetic that even if one take sides between the characters, it’s impossible not to viscerally see and feel the sacrifice and pain on the other side of it.
Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in ELVIS.
Overall, ELVIS is more of a look into his life and career from a certain perspective than the traditional biopic, but it works so seamlessly to combine all the things that one could possibly want from a picture about the King: spectacle, heart, soul, and rock ‘n roll. While some may find this specific take on his story to be long, over-dramatized, or less-than-subtle, it takes a special kind of creative mind to understand how to bring this story to life and enlarge it to fill the shoes of a legend—and Luhrmann took on that task and captured it perfectly.