Baz Luhrmann, who makes a proud virtue of unsubtlety, takes on the legend of Elvis in his newest movie.
, which tallies up the take-home pay of the dead, he made a mere thirty million dollars in 2021—more than Arnold Palmer, it’s true, but less than Bing Crosby and Dr. Seuss. Elvis can rest easy, though. This year, his income could see a healthy spike, thanks to the latestfilm, “Elvis,” which features Austin Butler in the title role. Presleyologists will learn nothing here, and purists will find plenty against which to rail.
Guiding us through this strange saga, in which the most private moments feel like public property, is Colonel Tom Parker. As has long been established, he was not a proper colonel, or a Parker, or even a Tom. He was a Dutchman, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, who went to America and erected a new identity for himself, as breezily as someone putting up a big top. He became Elvis’s manager, magus, m.c., and terminator. Were Kevin Spacey not otherwise engaged, he’d be a natural fit for the part.
Grab a bathroom break in the middle of “Elvis” and you could easily miss the speediest part of the film. This is a montage devoted to Elvis’s least purple patch, in which he headed west, at Parker’s urging, to be a movie star. The result included such immortal works as “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and “Clambake” , and “Elvis” duly supplies its hero with a leading man’s lament. “I’m so tired of playing Elvis Presley,” he says.
All of which, to those who sensed the explosive charge of the earlier Elvis, is a travesty, a tragedy, and a kind of creative death. Greil Marcus, in his majestic essay “,” refers to “the all-but-complete assimilation of a revolutionary musical style into the mainstream of American culture, where no one is challenged and no one is threatened.” The question is whether Luhrmann’s “Elvis” feeds that continuing process of absorption or strives to hold out against it.
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