All Shook Down

The hardest, most essential part of depicting Elvis on film is finding a living human being to play Elvis Presley. In Austin Butler, Baz Lurhman has his man, an actor who could credibly draw screams of wanton desire, not to mention bras and undies, from a throng of teenage girls, who could compel a segregationist moral panic simply with the movement of his hips. But who could also slay a Vegas crowd with plodding--though somehow still electrifying--kung-fu moves while wearing a massive, bedazzled jumpsuit, who could make you almost forget the chintzy venue, the pounds of bloat, the extremely gone look in the eye, who can usher you through kitsch to something closer to nirvana through the sheer force of his rock-and-roll kingliness.

Butler can do all these things and yet this movie is astonishingly bad and not just in the normal, just-so biopic-y ways. Want to tell the story of Elvis? Build the movie around Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis's lecherous longtime manager. Cast Tom Hanks, put him in a fat suit and facial prosthetics, let him run the show in a Dutch-accented voiceover that is neither Dutch, nor how Colonel Tom actually spoke. In honor of the old sideshow huckster, give the film a portentous mescaline carney vibe. Give us, please, lots of shots of the aged Colonel (spoiler: he's not a real Colonel) wandering empty casino floors in a hospital gown, IV bag in tow. That's how you make a movie about Elvis. 

Luhrman has always been a cornball whose movies tend to date themselves almost instantly. But he also has a feel for intense, vivid romance. I challenge you to look at Leo and Claire making eyes at each other through the fish tank while that Des'ree song plays--two movingly beautiful people visibly stunned to be gazing on one another--and not get all the way up in your feelings. (For the full Baz experience, contrast any scene featuring R  + J with the rest of the movie: the MTV Beach House-style editing, the Benny Hill-style gags, the white dudes screaming Shakespeare in blaccent.) 

We get some of that ecstatic romance in this film whenever Elvis is on stage casting his spell with that. But almost everything else here--Col. Tom's voiceover, the tone-poetic montages, the scary-clown motif (for real)--steps on that magic. The worst part: I know Luhrman has always gone big with anachronistic music choices but how could it possibly be the right idea to bleed Elvis's songs into a hip-hop remix at almost every turn? I get that it might be time to reappraise Elvis's relationship to Black music. He was a truly great blues and gospel singer who came by his influences honestly and had lots of Black fans back in the day. Maybe he actually was tight with B.B. King and Little Richard as this film suggests, I don't know. But the theft racial capitalism pulled off with Elvis as its poster boy was real and no amount of Denzel Curry verses can change that. I mean, the closing credits feature Nardo Wick rapping over "In the Ghetto"--a ludicrously out-of-touch song, basically the Moynihan report in lounge boogie form. That's just the crassest revisionism. And if you want to push the point about the line that runs from big Mama Thornton to Doja Cat, make a movie about Big Mama Thornton, call it "Hound Dog." Black music doesn't need Elvis. Don't name check a blues legend in one scene to give street cred to the epochally famous white rock star. Don't pretend her brief appearance makes the theft any less criminal. 

The film closes with one of Elvis's final shows, just months before his death. The scene segues from Butler's performance into archival footage. Swollen and sweaty, all of 42 but looking prehistoric, Elvis mumbles and staggers to the piano; everyone shifts uncomfortably in their chair. Elvis sips from one of the many Coke cups scattered around and, with a roadie holding the mic in front of his mouth, unleashes an absolutely hair-raising version of "Unchained Melody." He is 'luded to the gills, dying before our eyes. But his voice is massive and gorgeous and his passion is real. That's Elvis for you, the fucking King. It's hard to understand why Luhrman felt the need for the grand guignol expressionism when all you really need is the man himself.