Everyman Bristol
I don't know if Sofia Coppola's Priscilla was consciously intended as a riposte to Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, or if the two were conceived independently. At any rate, it's hard not to compare the two films. Austin Butler embodied Elvis Presley: impersonating his voice and mimicking his body language until you were half prepared to believe that The King had finally returned. Jacob Elordi is certainly very good-looking, but he doesn't particularly resemble Presley. One feels one is watching a very good actor in an Elvis suit; particularly later in the movie when he's playing the older, fatter, more vulgar Vegas incarnation. It doesn’t help that it’s only a few weeks since we had to watch Barry Keoghan drinking his bathwater.
I don't know if Sofia Coppola's Priscilla was consciously intended as a riposte to Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, or if the two were conceived independently. At any rate, it's hard not to compare the two films. Austin Butler embodied Elvis Presley: impersonating his voice and mimicking his body language until you were half prepared to believe that The King had finally returned. Jacob Elordi is certainly very good-looking, but he doesn't particularly resemble Presley. One feels one is watching a very good actor in an Elvis suit; particularly later in the movie when he's playing the older, fatter, more vulgar Vegas incarnation. It doesn’t help that it’s only a few weeks since we had to watch Barry Keoghan drinking his bathwater.
We hardly ever hear Elvis sing: there's a piano rendition of Whole Lot of Shaking at a private party and a brief glimpse of Guitar Man in the 1968 TV comeback, but not much else. Maybe that's an artistic decision; or maybe the studio didn't have copyright access to the back catalogue. But it means that what we see is the shy, damaged, back-stage figure: never the magnetic, charismatic on-stage presence. (In the Luhrmann movie, Unchained Melody covers a multitude of sins.) And the name Tom Parker is hardly even mentioned. This tends to work in favour of the film. A lot of the time it's just Some Guy -- very competently acted, but a character in a film, a person we don't especially know -- who is treating a young woman as a plaything. We kind of stop being aware that we’re looking at E*L*V*I*S P*R*E*S*L*E*Y.
I knew from the Other Movie (TM) about the elephant in the King's bedroom. Elvis's wife, Priscilla, was ten years younger than him; only fourteen years old (the movie says fifteen) when the relationship began. There is no suggestion of directly sexual impropriety: indeed, there is much old fashioned talk of parental permission, chaperones, and temporary legal guardianship. I believe that the adult Priscilla does not consider that she was, in the modern parlance, groomed. The film is directly based on her memoir, and she gets a credit as Executive Producer, so this is clearly the story as she remembers it. But sexual or not, the relationship is clearly a massive screw-up; and one that a modern celebrity's reputation would be unlikely to survive.
The film tells the story in pretty forensic detail, beginning when Elvis initiates the relationship, and ending when Priscilla terminates it. She’s the daughter (step-daughter, in point of fact) of a US army Captain, stationed in West Germany; another officer tells her that he knows Elvis Presley and invites her to one of his parties. It isn’t entirely clear if there is, even at this stage, an ulterior motive, or if the soldier is merely doing a kind thing and giving a lonely teenager the chance to meet a famous popstar.
When asked if she like Elvis, Priscilla replies that everyone does: but it isn't clear if she is a particular fan before the first meeting. Although shy, she's not star-struck; she doesn't scream or tell him that she likes his music or ask for an autograph. Before long, he is inviting her into his bedroom and opening up about his recent bereavement. Priscilla tells her parents that he is lonely and grieving and needs to hear an American voice, but it isn’t clear if she believes that herself, or indeed if we are meant to. There's a very telling moment when Priscilla leaves Elvis's car, says goodbye to him, and melts into the mob of screeching fans. This was before the Beatles.
Elvis returns to America, and after two years makes contact with Priscilla again, inviting her for a two week vacation in Graceland. Surprisingly, her parents permit this. He takes her to Vegas, gives her sleeping pills and amphetamines, but doesn’t appear to be more intimate than a kiss on the lips. One always forgets how relatively small and how relentlessly vulgar the Presley home was; from the stuffed tiger in his bedroom to the knick-knacks and ornaments in the downstairs living space. His father seems almost to stand-in for Col Parker as the controlling, business minded presence: the homely side is personified by Elvis's Granny (Lynn Griffin) and by Alberta the cook (Olivia Barrett) a black woman who everyone is pointedly respectful to. A few months later, bizarrely, Priscilla is allowed to move to Memphis on a permanent basis. She's still only 17.
I knew from the Other Movie (TM) about the elephant in the King's bedroom. Elvis's wife, Priscilla, was ten years younger than him; only fourteen years old (the movie says fifteen) when the relationship began. There is no suggestion of directly sexual impropriety: indeed, there is much old fashioned talk of parental permission, chaperones, and temporary legal guardianship. I believe that the adult Priscilla does not consider that she was, in the modern parlance, groomed. The film is directly based on her memoir, and she gets a credit as Executive Producer, so this is clearly the story as she remembers it. But sexual or not, the relationship is clearly a massive screw-up; and one that a modern celebrity's reputation would be unlikely to survive.
The film tells the story in pretty forensic detail, beginning when Elvis initiates the relationship, and ending when Priscilla terminates it. She’s the daughter (step-daughter, in point of fact) of a US army Captain, stationed in West Germany; another officer tells her that he knows Elvis Presley and invites her to one of his parties. It isn’t entirely clear if there is, even at this stage, an ulterior motive, or if the soldier is merely doing a kind thing and giving a lonely teenager the chance to meet a famous popstar.
When asked if she like Elvis, Priscilla replies that everyone does: but it isn't clear if she is a particular fan before the first meeting. Although shy, she's not star-struck; she doesn't scream or tell him that she likes his music or ask for an autograph. Before long, he is inviting her into his bedroom and opening up about his recent bereavement. Priscilla tells her parents that he is lonely and grieving and needs to hear an American voice, but it isn’t clear if she believes that herself, or indeed if we are meant to. There's a very telling moment when Priscilla leaves Elvis's car, says goodbye to him, and melts into the mob of screeching fans. This was before the Beatles.
Elvis returns to America, and after two years makes contact with Priscilla again, inviting her for a two week vacation in Graceland. Surprisingly, her parents permit this. He takes her to Vegas, gives her sleeping pills and amphetamines, but doesn’t appear to be more intimate than a kiss on the lips. One always forgets how relatively small and how relentlessly vulgar the Presley home was; from the stuffed tiger in his bedroom to the knick-knacks and ornaments in the downstairs living space. His father seems almost to stand-in for Col Parker as the controlling, business minded presence: the homely side is personified by Elvis's Granny (Lynn Griffin) and by Alberta the cook (Olivia Barrett) a black woman who everyone is pointedly respectful to. A few months later, bizarrely, Priscilla is allowed to move to Memphis on a permanent basis. She's still only 17.
It's at this point that Graceland reveals a gothically controlling vibe. (Did I mention that Jacob Elordi was the main character in Saltburn?) Elvis, his family, and the coterie of raucous young men who are not referred to as the Memphis Mafia maintain a secretive, reclusive life-style. One thinks a little of the Corleone household in a film directed by the director's Dad. Priscilla is finishing her education at a convent school, but it's made clear that she can't ever have friends to visit, and shouldn't even talk to the other students about Elvis. She isn't even allowed to play with the puppy Elvis bought for her on the front lawn.
With Elvis largely absent making a series of not-very-good movies, there is a sense that the fairy tale has already turned dark: that Priscilla is become the archetypal bird in a gilded cage. And when he is around, he is scarily controlling. In one disturbing scene him and his buddies choose (doubtless very expensive) dresses for Priscilla, completely without reference to her own preferences. ("I don't like brown, it reminds me of the army.") We see her dying her hair black and being forced into the familiar 1960s glamour image, entirely based on Elvis's view of female beauty. The couple eventually marry when Priscilla is twenty-two. Elvis doesn't want sex with her before this point, because he regards sex as very special and sacred, but this doesn't stop him going with other, more famous, women.
Dewey Cox casts a long shadow over music docudramas: when Elvis throws an amplifier at Priscilla in a studio, it’s hard not to wonder if he is going to start on the wash-basins next. There are a lot of violent and aggressive outbursts, immediately followed by apologies and protestations of true love. When Priscilla seems to be becoming close to her martial arts instructor, Elvis forces himself on her violently in the bedroom, announcing that this is how a real man makes love.
Although the film is told from Priscilla's point of view, and to a great extent in her voice, she remains a partial enigma. Cailee Spaeny gives an absolutely fascinating, understated performance; not an infatuated fan-girl, nor precisely a victim; she seems to have made the deal with her eyes partly open, gradually understanding the role she is expected to play and temporarily acquiescing to it. She's momentarily disappointed, shortly after their marriage, to find she's going to have Elvis's child, because that puts on hold all the plans that the couple had. He buys her smart cars and tells her that she has everything a woman could want, but she has little chance to leave the Graceland prison and experience the glamorous world she's bought into. When she finally walks away from him, he asks if he's lost her to another man: she says he's lost her to her own life.
The film is a little too fond of film-school imagery: extreme close ups of fingers putting on false eyelashes and mouths popping pills. There's a lot of montage: Christmas cards passing across mantlepieces to signify the passage of time; plates of food appearing outside hotel rooms. But perhaps that is the best arrow in the film-makers quiver with which to depict the passage of time in an essentially uninteresting life; a world in which not very much can happen. I did like the opening shot of Priscilla's pair feet walking across a deep pile carpet.
There is a moment or two when familiarity with the story is too much assumed. I don't think I would have understood the significance of the TV comeback show if I hadn't seen the other Elvis bio-pic, and I didn't understand the significance of the karate tutor until after I left the cinema.
Although the film is told from Priscilla's point of view, and to a great extent in her voice, she remains a partial enigma. Cailee Spaeny gives an absolutely fascinating, understated performance; not an infatuated fan-girl, nor precisely a victim; she seems to have made the deal with her eyes partly open, gradually understanding the role she is expected to play and temporarily acquiescing to it. She's momentarily disappointed, shortly after their marriage, to find she's going to have Elvis's child, because that puts on hold all the plans that the couple had. He buys her smart cars and tells her that she has everything a woman could want, but she has little chance to leave the Graceland prison and experience the glamorous world she's bought into. When she finally walks away from him, he asks if he's lost her to another man: she says he's lost her to her own life.
The film is a little too fond of film-school imagery: extreme close ups of fingers putting on false eyelashes and mouths popping pills. There's a lot of montage: Christmas cards passing across mantlepieces to signify the passage of time; plates of food appearing outside hotel rooms. But perhaps that is the best arrow in the film-makers quiver with which to depict the passage of time in an essentially uninteresting life; a world in which not very much can happen. I did like the opening shot of Priscilla's pair feet walking across a deep pile carpet.
There is a moment or two when familiarity with the story is too much assumed. I don't think I would have understood the significance of the TV comeback show if I hadn't seen the other Elvis bio-pic, and I didn't understand the significance of the karate tutor until after I left the cinema.
The film comes to an end when Priscilla tells Elvis she is leaving: there's a particular touching moment when its Granny Dodger and Alberta who say goodbye to her as she leaves Graceland for the last time. We see nothing of the couples lives after the divorce; the film eschews the usual end-title. Neither of them ever re-married, but the Other Film implies that Elvis and Priscilla remained friends.
Early on, Priscilla's Dad asks Elvis, who could pretty much have his pick of any beautiful woman in the world, what he sees in his daughter. And the film doesn't answer the question. What was Elvis getting out of the relationship? And what, apart from an early childish brush with celebrity, was Priscilla getting from it? It's a sad story which tarnishes our enjoyment of the songs and hip thrusting machismo. While Presley was the absolute personification of a toxic male, and Priscilla and her family were in way over their heads, the film seems to be saying that the two of them, at some level, did love each other very much indeed.
Early on, Priscilla's Dad asks Elvis, who could pretty much have his pick of any beautiful woman in the world, what he sees in his daughter. And the film doesn't answer the question. What was Elvis getting out of the relationship? And what, apart from an early childish brush with celebrity, was Priscilla getting from it? It's a sad story which tarnishes our enjoyment of the songs and hip thrusting machismo. While Presley was the absolute personification of a toxic male, and Priscilla and her family were in way over their heads, the film seems to be saying that the two of them, at some level, did love each other very much indeed.
Which doesn't really make the fairy tale any less sad.
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
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1 comment:
The Presley estate did indeed not permit use of his songs in this movie. The melody of "Love me tender" can be heard twice, though. (Since it's actually the music to a Civil War ballad that got reused.)
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