If we think of the image of Presley slumped in his penthouse suite, catatonic on a cocktail of hamburgers and prescription pills, with his bank of television screens blazing through the darkness, we get a close approximation of the experience and presentation of Luhrmann’s Elvis – a flashy speed-run through a century of American pop cultural history.
Rather than depict a linear presentation of Presley’s life, Luhrmann gives us a disorganized montage of competing scenes, sounds, events and images, all cut together as if we’re channel surfing (or as if our attention is being pulled in several different directions from one scene to the next.) The whole film feels as if each scene is being broadcast individually and simultaneously across a wall of television monitors, and we, as the audience, are having to scan from screen to screen then back again; the disorienting cacophony of sounds all mixed and remixed as if we’re hearing everything all at once and are left to pick out snippets of conversations, music, voices, until they’re drowned out again, or our attention focuses on something else.
On a level of technique this all sounds audacious, reminiscent (on paper at least) of the experimental approach Oliver Stone brought to his earlier films, JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). Unfortunately, Luhrmann lacks the focus of Stone as well as his depth and conviction. While he throws everything at his multi-media recreation of Elvis as pop cultural icon, it’s not exactly clear what the point of it all is?
Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:
One could use Presley as a lens through which to explore the changing landscape of pop culture, race and popular music. There’s a bit of that here, but not as much as you might expect for a film running close to three-hours. You could also look at the story more cynically, presenting Elvis as the establishment’s sock puppet (whose stage-managed persona and ‘scandalous’ hip shaking distracted the masses from the uncomfortable realities of the civil rights movement, the Korean war, the assassination of activists, presidents and presidential candidates, the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal). Luhrmann attempts to broach a bit of this as well, but he’s 1) too enamored with Presley as an artist to not view his role in this sympathetically, and 2) shifts the focus of the film in too many conflicting directions for any of it to land.
For instance, there’s no reason for the film to be told from the perspective of Presley’s manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker. The film presents Parker as the villain, but also allows Parker to present himself as a victim; giving the film an unnecessary conflict between what we see and what we’re told. We get the sense that Luhrmann wants the audience to feel as manipulated and lied to by Parker as Presley must have done in real life, but we don’t really need this, do we? We don’t need this additional level of self-reflection in which Parker gaslights the audience, while the audience becomes a witness to how monstrously Parker manipulates his star. It feels like Luhrmann is going for a kind of Citizen Kane (1941) rewritten by Brett Easton Ellis, but he can’t quite pull it off (it doesn’t help that Hanks as Parker is delivering one of the worst performances of the decade here.)
Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:
In this context, the end of the film and how the message is framed feels like insulting bullshit. Luhrmann gives Parker a platform to say it was “love that killed Elvis,” despite the obvious evidence that Presley was killed by his manager and handlers locking him into a punishing contract and schedule, allowing him to become estranged and alienated from any outside support network in order to better milk him as a cash cow, and then getting hooked on junk food and prescription meds. But none of this background matters for Luhrmann, as he ends the film with a montage of the real-life Presley, fully enshrined as a genuine icon, a legend, and not as another victim of the merciless entertainment industry (like Judy Garland or countless others) who was chewed up and exploited for financial gain.
So, what is Elvis for Luhrmann? What drew him to this project beyond a surface level idolization of Elvis and his work? I think the key is in the sequence depicting the production of the so-called ‘1968 Comeback Special.’ It’s here where the film finally snaps into focus, and we get a clear sense of what this all means for Luhrmann. The deconstructive, behind-the-scenes, film-within-a-film aspect of the special; the fourth-wall-breaking, ‘putting on a show’ spectacle of it all; the idea of Elvis as artist (or Elvis as Luhrmann), defying the expectations of his manager and the suits and the corporate sponsors; the idea of authenticity, of the pop star straining not just for artistic expression, but straining to be the voice of a people, to use his pop platform, his voice, his ‘gift’, to say something meaningful, to become protest personified.
Elvis [Baz Luhrmann, 2022]:
It’s a dazzling sequence for Luhrmann and becomes a kind of ‘Rosetta stone’ for the rest of the film, reflecting and refracting seventy years of pop culture history, enfolding the histories of gospel, rock n’ roll, punk rock, hip hop, theatrical performance and more onto the artifice of Hollywood spectacle; onto the format of the musical; on German expressionism; on the music video. All of it mixed and remixed, as Elvis transcends his role as pop star to become a focal point for American history; his voice expressing on behalf of all voices; his pain becoming our pain; his defiance becoming our defiance.
Again, it’s bullshit, and no less insulting than allowing a proxy Tom Parker to say Elvis was “killed by love,” but it’s the kind of bullshit Luhrmann frequently gets away with, 1) because these kind of sequences (both the ‘68 special and the later scenes involving Presley’s residency in Las Vegas) play exceptionally well to his style of multi-media, cinematic bricolage, and 2) because we get a sense he actually believes it.
