When Elvis Presley died in 1977, he became something of a joke to many. Bloated, increasingly isolated, addicted to fast food and amphetamines, he seemed like a grim caricature of the lean rocker who revolutionized popular culture back in the 1950s.
His hectic life and early death was presented as a cautionary tale, and, like all good tales, it had a villain – his manager, Colonel Parker.
The Colonel undoubtedly helped Elvis achieve worldwide fame in the early stages of his career, but subsequently milked his cash cow by signing him up for a dull parade of bad movies and locking him into a Las Vegas residence that turned rock god into a parody.
The colonel, of course, was neither a colonel nor a southern gentleman at all – he was Dries van Cuijk, a Dutch swindler who had so successfully rethought his personality that he almost convinced himself.
At Baz Luhrmann Elvis, he runs the show from start to finish, played with a Tom Hanks wink and smirk, barely recognizable under a sea of wobbly prosthetics. This is the Colonel telling from his deathbed, looking back through a haze of morphine and insisting on telling his side of the story.
In 1955, he runs a touring carnival and introduces country singer Hank Snow when he hears a strange noise coming from a turntable.
This is Elvis singing It’s all right, mom, an incendiary single that will soon explode the entire music industry. While the whole country is twisting around him, Parker thinks that there is something in this kid, especially when he finds out that he is not black, but white.
Elvis (Austin Butler) hails from the poor and mostly African-American neighborhood of Tupelo, Mississippi, and grew up immersed in black culture, RnB and gospel music—many influences he subconsciously blended with country to create a new, dynamic, and all-American sound.
And while true musicians like Sam Phillips of Sun Records hear something divine about Elvis’ early work, The Colonel hears the money and pulls his claws into Tennessee tears as quickly as possible.
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Luhrmann’s film then chaotically describes the next 20-plus years of Presley’s short and eventful life.
Helen Thompson plays Gladys Presley, a powerful matriarch to whom her son is devoted, Olivia DeJonge plays Priscilla Wagner, who was only 14 when Elvis met her but ended up becoming his only wife, and there are fleeting cameos from people like B.B. King. (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Little Richard (Elton Mason), and sister Rosetta Tharp (Yola Quartey).
Much is said about Presley’s early ties to African-American culture, but there is little mention of his ardent Republicans and active support of Richard Nixon. And while a life like his is hard to embrace, there may have been better ways to try than this.
Luhrmann’s style is well-known – full of jumpy cuts and short attention spans, his camera bouncing from scene to scene and almost never stopping for a moment. There are nice moments, for example, the scene where It’s all right, mom sounds for the first time, or the section where we see Elvis, the great arranger, preparing his band for those legendary early shows in Las Vegas.
But the film’s relationship to Presley’s music is bewildering – almost no song is played in its entirety, and the ones we do hear are thrown away as useless overlays. Butler is pretty good as the young and swaggering Presley, but every time we begin to understand Elvis, the Colonel hobbles in front of him, blocking our view.
The decision to give Parker what actually equals Presley is a problematic one, and as a result we are mired in the confused musings of a dying con man and only bypass the great artist’s life and personality.
It’s a missed opportunity and a relatively simple biopic like, say, Walk the line, would work much better. Perhaps some kind soul will do it.
Rating: two stars
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Ethan Hawke is terrifying as Grabber’s killer
Black phone (16, 102 min.)
A horror film with half a brain by Scott Derrickson. black phone It’s an adapted story by Joe Hill and is set in small town Denver in 1978, where something’s not right amidst minor league games and dodgy outbursts.
When Finny (Mason Thames) walks home from school with his little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), they pass posters of missing children. Finny knew some of them and is about to become one himself when a serial killer known as “The Grabber” kidnaps him off the street.
Finny wakes up in a soundproof basement where he is occasionally visited by Grabber (Ethan Hawke), who is both frustrated and soft-spoken, but leaves the boy in no doubt as to what will happen next.
On the wall in the night, an old disconnected black phone rings eerily, and when Finny answers, he hears the voices of Grabber’s victims urging him to run.
black phone could easily be overly unpleasant, but it isn’t, and it has the slightly surreal quality of a Brothers Grimm tale, although it is resolved with inappropriate haste.
Rating: three stars
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Group of French prisoners inspired by Beckett’s classic
Big Hit (15A, 105 minutes)
It’s so unlikely that this should be based on a true story, a comic drama by Emmanuel Kurkol. big hit Cad Merad plays Étienne, an often unemployed actor who takes a job in a drama workshop in a French prison.
Surprised by the unbridled talent he finds there, he encourages them to rehearse Samuel Beckett’s absurd classic. Waiting for Godot. “Some bored guys are waiting for someone who will never come,” he tells them. – Sounds familiar, no? The play speaks to the prisoners so much that Étienne comes up with the brilliant idea of going on tour with the play.
The incredible adventure that follows will take him and his gang of villains through the provinces and all the way to the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris, where unpleasant surprises await them.
big hit wears his heart on his sleeve, and although his story is inspired by a real-life prison production Waiting for Godot in Sweden it seems somewhat far-fetched. However, it is cordial and has its moments. Merad excels as Étienne, whose good intentions are slightly compromised by the fact that he himself craves the spotlight.
Rating: Three stars
