In Cinemas now!
By James Murphy
When Baz Luhrmann directed Romeo and Juliet, it wasn’t necessarily Shakespeare; it was Shakespeare through the lens of Luhrmann: stylish, simplified, and as subtle as a sledgehammer. Similarly, if you’re looking for warts and all Elvis, Luhrmann’s biopic is not your film. If, however, you are craving an airbrushed, sequinned caped, Broadway ready but slightly bloated celebration of the King of Rock and Roll, then Baz has you covered.
Musical biopics usually face a severe impediment: there must be a suspension of disbelief, an acceptance that the actor that doesn’t quite look or sound like the musician that you know and love actually is that musician. Austin Butler, as the titular Elvis had big, blue suede shoes to fill. Butler, in a career defining role, remarkably transforms to such a degree that his identity is never questioned. It is a performance that, when combined with Luhrmann’s eye-candy sets and costumes, almost papers over the film’s cracks. This is melodrama writ large, though; a soap opera on a Hollywood budget.
Two of Luhrmann’s works have since found new life on the stage as works of musical theatre. He’s good at the song and dance routines, and he always makes sure that any emotional beats are so performative that they can be seen from the very back row. By framing his Elvis as a binary battle of good versus evil between Elvis and Tom Hanks’ Colonel Tom Parker, though, he harkens back to a by-gone age of Hollywood where the good cowboy wore the white hat and the villain wore the black one. Audiences have matured since then, and while Parker undoubtedly exerted a degree of coercive control over Elvis, the screenplay’s hesitance to hold the latter accountable for his own questionable decisions and the foisting of all responsibility onto the cartoonish villainy of the former lessened the very human tragedy of the tale.
After a while in the Hollywood wilderness, this, I suppose, will be Baz Luhrmann’s comeback special but it’s unfortunately not that special, despite an exceptional lead performance
Elvis is now screening at Palace Nova Eastend and Palace Prospect cinemas.
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