Bum bum from a musical biopic, the only genre capable of bingo today at the box office along with sagas and cinecomics. Great soundtracks, moving stories, better if fictional, a cast all star. Who was there and who knows check the veracity of the show. That is, that the parable of the star / diva is respected and the representation does not derail. The rest is regardless, Totò would say. Let’s talk about Elvis Presley, who had a very special existence, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones: already in 1979, two years after his death, John Carpenter dedicated a not inconsiderable film to the most loved rocker, Elvis the King of Rockcon Kurt Russell.
Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935. He died in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 16, 1977, at the age of 42, overwhelmed by excesses, from a dissipated lifestyle and a creeping sickness of life, son of whites, grew up poor in a black neighborhood, with a fatal attraction to blues and gospel. A revolutionary: if he did not invent rock, we are close to it. For sure he influenced popular culture, natural, sexy and empathetic showman, with that hovering – hence the nickname Elvis the Pelvis – who he broke all the schemes of bourgeois America dominated by three demons: conformity, sexual repression, racism.
He paid, he fell, he knew how to rise again. He conquered Hollywood, he was the king of Las Vegas. He became a crooner worthy of Frank Sinatra e the most requested and paid actor of the time. He felt fulfilled only on stage: once he got off, there was only boredom and melancholy for him. Vernon and Gladys’ son lived many lives. Vernon was a penniless who also ended up in jail for some bad business. Gladys a hen who got along with odd jobs. Elvis survived the twin who died shortly after birth. Mom Gladys from that moment poured a double load of attention on him which fueled one of the most impressive Oedipus ensembles in musical history. Elvis played guitar and sang with a wink to Johnny Cash’s country music.
The usual process. “But Elvis always had something more.” At concerts, girls screamed, radios played his songs, right-thinking politicians opposed him: too far ahead. Presley pierced the screen, he was a driver who wanted to be loved, recognized: that’s why he bought Graceland, his palace, and lots of pink Cadillacs. A goose that lays golden eggs. She noticed immediately Colonel Tom Parker, real name Andreas van Kuijk, emancipated smugglerwith a big hair on his stomach, of uncertain origins, who accompanied him from the Tennessee amusement parks to the super-luxury hotels in Las Vegas, where he lived the last, self-destructive period.
The film recalls the two years of military service used byestablishment (and by Parker himself) as a purge for the most transgressive aspects of the character, the demolition media campaigns he had to undergo, the love for Priscilla and the birth of Lisa Marie, the stars who inspired her, Marlon Brando and James Dean, shopping sprees, nervous breakdowns, pills and junk food. He held concerts, harnessed as an admiral. Even now the promoters of gossip and fake news they claim that Elvis is never dead but he hides in a secret location and laughs and sings it. All her life she has cherished the hope of a world tour. It would have been the apotheosis, but Elvis never did, arresting his overflowing talent on the American border.
From heaven to hell, locked in the rooms of the Hotel International in Las Vegas, which did not prevent him from maintaining a primordial innocence, unlike that America that had helped to change.
The show is there. Baz Luhrmann builds the film on lightning, on sudden illuminations, without respite and without escape. He tells by fragments, image cuts, brushstrokes and expressive euphoria, composing a powerful, colorful, tender and lively fresco, just like Elvis’ songs. There are extraordinary things in the film 1) the mass scenes and the flying shots, 2)the soundtrack accurate but not invasivein which they stand out Can’t Help Falling in Love e Are You Lonesome Tonight; 3) the very tight editing with sequences of a few seconds, built on a script by Luhrmann and Jeremy Doner and on the screenplay by Sam Bromell and Craig Pearce; 4) a Renaissance taste of the total / particular; 5) the incipit, with the delicate youthful portrait, and the ending that we all know. It is difficult to think that the excellent Austin Butler, an almost novice, could alone support that monument of music that was Elvis. For this he was joined by the more experienced Tom Hanks distorted by makeup and transformed into a sort of Penguin / Geppetto / Mefistofele with blue eyes, present at all the twists and turns of history, capable of influencing (and manipulating) the fragile rocker and at the same time smoothing the corners of his complex personality.
ELVIS the Baz Luhrmann
(USA-Australia, 2022, duration 159 ‘)
con Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Helen Thompson, Richard Roxburgh, Olivia DeJonge, Luke Bracey, David Wenham, Kelvin Harrison
Rating: *** 1/2 out of 5
In the halls
June 25, 2022 | 08:42
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