Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic lasts 159 minutes. And I cried almost the whole time. However, I more or less cried through Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet”: 113 minutes. That’s a lot of tears.
Both films are about an impossible love that can only end tragically. William Shakespeare’s “star-cross’d lovers” fail because of the hatred of the elderly. The star Elvis Presley fails because of love itself. He needs the fake love of the audience, he sacrifices everything to it – in the end himself.
And as Shakespeare says – translated by Thomas Brasch – in the preface to “Romeo and Juliet”: “If you watch our play for two hours, / it may be: Then you know more, it may be: Not much.”
Luhrmann doesn’t tell us anything that we haven’t known since Albert Goldmann’s 1981 biography. Yes, he tells us less. The latent bisexuality, for example, which accounted for part of Elvis’ fascination with men in particular, is faded out. Like anything that is not clearly defined, is not definite.
Luhrmann loves bang effects. And the film delivers – especially in the first half hour – bang effects by the dozen. The story, told a thousand times, of how a child from the “white trash” mixed gospel and blues, country and rock’n’roll, black and white and thereby created an outlet for the suppressed sexuality of an entire generation of white children on the one hand, and the racial segregation on the other brought collapse.
After all, it is the founding myth not only of rock ‘n’ roll, but of the America against which Donald Trump and his ilk are waging war. Luhrmann confirms the story, exaggerates it with garish images, doesn’t cover guitars and voices with the patina of the 1950s, but makes them sound very modern, as if we were experiencing this culture war here and now. what we do
Tom Hanks is the manager of the “King” at Baz Luhrman
Source: Warner Bros.
After the explosive early years and scenes, everything that comes must seem like descent: the military service that saw Elvis descend from rebel to role model; the Hollywood years of making cheap movies after cheap ones and being masochistically fooled; the triumphant black leather comeback in the revolutionary year 1968.
And then the third descent, this time to the Las Vegas star, who got fatter and fatter; the failure of the marriage, the money problems, the drug addiction, the lonely death in the toilet shortly before a tour that should once again be “the best”, “the biggest”, and on which only the old hits have been recycled by one man would have long since become a rhinestone caricature of himself.
The film is decidedly too long
How does a film thwart this inexorably death-leaning dramaturgy of real life? To anticipate: Luhrmann cannot do that either. The film is decidedly too long. 120 minutes would have done it too.
But Luhmann resorts to a dramatic feint by letting Colonel Parker, Presley’s manager and at least since Goldmann’s revelations, the villain of the story tell the whole story. Tom Hanks plays the immigrant from the Netherlands who – perhaps while fleeing the police – changed his name, remained stateless and learned the fine art of selling dreams to the public and pretending that dreams were fulfilled at the fairgrounds and in the circus.
And Hanks plays the old crook beautifully. Luhrmann’s thesis is: Parker only ever saw Elvis as a hype attraction and never took it seriously as a cultural revolutionary. “We are the same,” Hanks tells his protégé: “We want to stage the greatest show in the world.”
Against Mephisto Hanks – whose face swells with the success of the film thanks to prosthetics and then collapses – Luhrmann sets various figures who admonish Elvis to remain true to himself: his mother, black musicians like BB King, his wife Priscilla, the producer of the comeback show Steve Binder.
Did Elvis see through himself?
But one wonders if an entertainer like Elvis even has a self to be true to; if he even has a persona off the stage. The notion of a “real” Elvis returning to his musical roots is just another – arguably more male – projection and no more true than the sexual fantasies of female fans.
Elvis himself, however, with his sardonic smile, his mock naivety and his subtle humor always conveyed the feeling that he saw through himself. But maybe that’s just projection.
Here finally – and finally – we must speak of the main character. Austin Butler is good at imitating the moves of the King of Rock and Roll, but now any halfway skilled Elvis impersonator can do it: a venerable profession that makes a lot of people money, ironically not least at the fair where Parker learned his craft.
What Butler doesn’t have at all is the abysmal, dangerous, self-ironic character of the King, not to mention the tragic. Butler is the nice boy next door guy. Elvis wasn’t a nice boy. Butler is pretty. Elvis was beautiful. Butler comes from a generation that finds pop music quite nice. Elvis came from a generation for which music was as important as religion.
“Jailhouse Rock” isn’t just a song, it’s a manifesto. An anthem. You can’t play this way of life. Anyway, Butler can’t. Maybe that’s why I cried.