Everyman Bristol
I remember the summer of '77; I remember the Daily Mirror headline. Elvis. Is. Dead. I don't know if I was even aware of him before that. I suppose I knew that Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was a send-up of an actual pop singer. I have never known the papers go so completely insane over a celebrity, not even when Princess Di died, twenty years later (almost to the day).
It is hard to remember now how recent Elvis was: twenty three years separated the invention of rock and roll and the death of its progenitor. And it's hard to appreciate his importance to that generation. My parents generation, although my parents paid no attention to Elvis and claimed to have barely noticed the Beatles.
I don't think even the death of John Lennon hit the world as hard. Lennon's death had a tragedy to it; Elvis's a pathos. One killed by a maniac for no reason at the height of his powers; the other neglecting his health and going into an early decline. Both, arguably, victims of their celebrity.
There is a moment, right at the end of the movie, when Priscilla, divorced from Presley but still caring about him, begs him to go to a clinic and straighten himself out. He tells her that he hasn't done anything in his life that will be remembered. He's been offered the leading role in A Star Is Born opposite Barbara Striesand (a role which eventually went to Kris Kristofferson): we hear a snide news report saying that he should have no difficulty playing a washed-up star. "If only..." are the two saddest words in the English language. But it's hard to imagine the story turning out differently from the way it did. We can imagine John Lennon at eighty: writing puzzling, eccentric songs like the Very Old Bob Dylan, living on his reputation like the Very Old Paul McCartney. It is hard to know what the Very Old Elvis Presley could possibly have done. I suppose that is why some fans find it so easy to believe that he is still alive, frozen in time, continuing forever.
I think my knowledge of Elvis's life prior to seeing this film comes literally from a biographical cartoon strip the Daily Mirror ran in the weeks after he died, and the 1978 West End musical that was the main cause of Shakin' Stevens. One of my less unpleasant school teachers ran a theatre club and took us to see whatever he could get cut-price party bookings for -- the Mousetrap or the Ghost Train or Elvis the Musical. I remember them doing Mamma Like The Roses when Mrs Presley died, with roses back projected on the stage, and thinking it was quite sad. But people who know about this stuff seem to think that the film is pretty faithful to what happened. It's been more or less endorsed by Priscilla and Lisa Marie.
It's impressionistic; it doesn't aspire to being a docudrama. It's told from the point of view of Tom Parker, looking back on his career after suffering a heart attack some years after Elvis's death. (We are intended to think of Citizen Kane, a bit, maybe.) He talks to the audience, justifying himself. Who killed Elvis? Not I, said his manager. Tom Hanks is brilliant, although it's a turn rather than a performance. He is pretty much an unqualified Satan figure. When he offers Elvis the earth if he'll sign an exclusive contract -- at the top of a Ferris wheel -- we're obviously meant to think of the temptation of Jesus. He's also sometimes a comedic fool: there is a prolonged sequence in which he is trying to insist on a Christmas routine during the 1968 "comeback" show, asking Elvis to play "the drumming boy". He has some understanding of business and a knack for designing model stage layouts. I don't know if their relationship was more nuanced than the film suggests.
Sometimes it feels as if the film is rushing through a series of vignettes, although actually it's enormously long. From the young man who kind of invents rock and roll, all stage nerves and sex; to the hysteria around his perceived threat to the morality of America; the interlude in the military, Hollywood, the partially successful come-back show; his residency in Las Vegas, decline, death. Austin Butler looks as much like Elvis as any actor can be expected to, without feeling like a tribute act. Memphis Elvis and Vegas Elvis and Fat Elvis have to be conveyed by clothes and sun glasses rather than make up or prosthetics. Some of the outfits are so iconic that it's jarring to remember there was an actual person inside them.
It shows the story rather than tells it. There are no speeches to camera about cultural appropriation but it is made very clear that Hound Dog and That's All Right Un' Mama didn't emerge without precursors. The opening minutes of the movie are utterly gripping -- Young Elvis hearing a black man singing That's All Right in a bar and then running to a revival tent where the black folks are singing When I Die Hallelujah By and By and seeming to be "slain in the spirit" himself. And naturally I was delighted to know that Elvis was a comic book fan; specifically wearing the Shazam insignia as a pendant and talking about flying to the Rock of Eternity. (I knew that in the Vegas years he sometimes wore Captain Marvel inspired costumes, although of course Captain Marvel is himself drawing on circus and carnival imagery.) The chronology gives you pause for thought: Superman and Captain Marvel were created in a world where Elvis Presley did not yet exist. Where pop music barely existed.
Having enjoyed Nightmare Alley earlier this year, I was interested to find out that Col. Parker had started out as a "carny" and that he initially interpreted Elvis in terms of a side-show: the sort of act that made people feel things they didn't ought to be feeling. The film gives a sense of the sheer power of Elvis's early performances: I knew his "wiggling" was thought to be risque, but I hadn't realised how shamelessly orgasmic his performances were. You half expect someone to say "I'll have what he's having." (I suppose in a way the whole of America did.) But it's also a little like the people in the mission tent who believed themselves to be possessed by the Holy Ghost. Charismatic revival meetings can sometimes get quite sexy. Girls had screamed at Frank Sinatra and they would scream at the Beatles. The Beatles were good looking young guys, but I don't think they ever fucked the audience in quite this way. It's a little hard to see how Parker could seriously have envisaged re-inventing him as an all-round family entertainer. (Was there a double bluff going on, with the Colonel presenting himself as the manager of a maverick force of nature he couldn't control?) Elvis must have been a pro, and a decent musician, to carry off all the Christmas songs and schmaltz when he was required to. He is furious when a TV station makes him sing Hound Dog to an actual dog, in order to make it clear that no lewd innuendo is intended. (Decades later the BBC would splice a picture of some bells into a particular Chuck Berry number, to make the point that sometimes a ding-a-ling is just a ding-a-ling.) "I can do skits" says Elvis "I could have made it funny."
We see Elvis meeting Priscilla during his military service (the age difference is mentioned but not laboured). He talks about meeting Natalie Wood, and wonders if he could ever be as good an actor as "Jimmy" Dean. His actual film career is skated over in a single montage; but it's clear he was serious about being an actor. Never mind Dean: Tom Parker thinks that in his first movie he was as good as Brando.
I'd picked up a false impression that his Las Vegas residency was a period of decline and artistic servitude, but the movie makes it clear that he was playing the music that he wanted to play in the way that he wanted to play it. There's a great use of split screen so we see That's All Right being performed by Vegas Elvis, Young Elvis, and the original guy in the bar simultaneously.
The film isn't about the biographical data, but it isn't engaged in myth-making either. It seems to engage with the idea of Elvis Presley. A while ago I talked about the Johnny Cash bio-pic, Walk The Line, and Walk Hard, a direct parody of it. I said that I found it hard to keep track of which was which. (Cash watching a movie about Folsom Prison and hoping he never goes there -- was that the film or the parody? Cash's dad using "wrong son died" as a mantra?) Even quite decent films like Backbeat and Nowhere Boy don't quite avoid knowingly glancing at the audience when a famous future event is ironically foreshadowed. Baz Luhrmann manages to avoid straying into that territory; although I think you have to have some buy-in into the Elvis myth to persevere through the almost three hour running time.
The film, unbearably, winds up with real footage of Fat Elvis singing Unchained Melody shortly before his death; even near the end he could still project emotion and connect with an audience. The film can't resist ending with the voice of someone informing the punters that the performing artist is not in the building any more. A caption explains that he was the most successful recording artist of all time and that he had a big influence on later bands. But I think we knew that already.
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