Elvis Review: Austin Butler Will Leave You Shaken

This is clear from the outset, for it’s there we begin not with Elvis looking back on his entire life before he plays, but rather a decrepit Tom Parker who on his deathbed is still making excuses for draining that Presley kid dry. Parker’s life has been a long, blurred night at the  roulette table ever since Elvis’ death at the age of 42, and Luhrmann is only too happy to  visualize this spoiled irony as the camera literally spins around Hanks on a frame that’s been bisected by red and black lines. This character, and this film, are going to take us for a ride.

We then whirl back to the mid-1950s to find a slightly younger Parker in his element as a carnival barker, and in need of a new act for his sideshow. When he hears about a white kid who “sounds Black,” it’s a wonder dollar signs do not appear in his eyes. Voiceover dialogue and inserted comic book panels later assert that Parker recognized Elvis (a sensational Austin Butler) was something of a superhero, but what’s more telling is one of the early shots where Parker spies on the young heartthrob. The camera captures Elvis’ silhouette beside a “Geek Show” sign in the classic Nightmare Alley sense, suggesting Luhrmann is going for something darker than all the surface level opulence suggests. And, remarkably, this storm cloud lingers over all the bombast and Graceland pyrotechnics which follow, tracking Elvis from early rock star and perceived sexual deviant (particularly to Southern segregationists) to hammy movie star, and then finally finding him as a washed up self-parody buried in his own Vegas-sized Xanadu.

One almost wonders whether the title “Caught in a Trap” was bandied around Warner Brothers? No matter the case, Luhrmann and company’s ability to shroud this melancholy in such grandiosity, and with such disarming sincerity, makes the viewing experience inexplicably come off as a kind of victory.

That win is in large part due to Butler’s truly transcendent performance. Devoid of caricature or casino impersonator cheese, Butler incredulously becomes “the King.” Sure, he still does the lip curl, and he shakes those hips magnificently, but in spite of lacking little of Presley’s physical appearance, what makes this muscular creation so effective is a sweaty, relentless desperation. In the moments on stage when his gaze tightens, and his rock god persona taps into primal divinity, the movie elevates itself above just nostalgia. Butler, and Luhrmann’s penchant for distinctly manic editing, is what causes this most ancient of ancient boomer music to suddenly feel dangerous again.

More’s the pity then that the director cannot also resist his equally distinct taste for anachronisms. As with Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby (2013) before it, modern pop music (and in the case of Elvis, a handful of covers of the Memphis standards) are sampled and woven into the period piece. Elvis is more sparing about such flourishes, but they should never have been used at all. Whereas the anachronism was the point of those earlier movies, Elvis has enough going for (and against) itself already. There’s no need to reveal a lack of confidence about the relevancy of its titular star with younger audiences.

This is doubly true since the movie struggles plenty in other areas. The most talked about of which has been Hanks’ bellicose turn as a Dutch huckster. And sure enough, the Forrest Gump star sounds as if Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was doing a Van Helsing impression, except here the professor is the bloodsucker. It’s ill-advised, but in a movie that wallows in showbiz artifice it’s hardly any more distracting than whirling, superimposed title cards that frame the honeymoon years of Elvis’ marriage to his child bride Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) like they were one of the King’s goofy surfing movies.

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