The King Of Rock and Roll has never had a feature length blockbuster portraying his life until now. He starred in his own bout of films: Flaming Star, Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock – but never was there a biopic focused on Elvis the man, especially one so haunting.
Australian director Baz Luhrmann has been away from the big screen for almost a decade, and his much-anticipated return to the silver screen is an impish, delirious fever dream. In Elvis, our Presley stand in (hardly) is Austin Butler – a teenage heartthrob who, with Elvis, becomes a man. He outshines fellow cast members to create something indelibly dynamic, putting seasoned actors like co-star Tom Hanks – playing Elvis’s Dutch puppet-master, Colonel Tom Parker - to shame.
Luhrmann’s Elvis is beautifully shot, coloured, and textured. But its performances elevate it; Austin “channelled and embodied” Elvis’s energy, his “heart and soul” according to his own daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.
“If he doesn’t get an Oscar for this, I will eat my own foot,” she said.
A return to form for Luhrmann, who captures the Moulin-Rouge magic of his early career to follow Elvis from young, impressionable writhing performances in Memphis gospel tents to the blinding lights of Las Vegas legendry.
There have been performances which embodied a since passed artist, a towering cultural figure - Joaquin Pheonix as Johnny Cash in Walk The Line comes to mind. There is the plaintiveness of Walk the Line in Elvis – a gloomy American Dream that is sadder than one might expect from a film about The King.
But this story about Elvis and Colonel Parker’s relationship is real, it has the endorsement of those who were there.
“It is a true story told brilliantly and creatively that only Baz, in his unique artistic way, could have delivered,” Priscilla Presley, Elvis’s ex-wife said.
Elvis is opening at the Bowen Summergarden Cinema in late July.
Austin Butler in Elvis
Photo: Warner Brothers Pcitures
