Hail to the King?

Writer-director Baz Luhrmann has landed everywhere on the spectrum for me. Moulin Rouge remains, to this day, one of my very favorite movies. His Romeo + Juliet was pretty good. But Australia was bone dry, and I now remember it as even worse than I apparently thought when I saw it; I haven't gone out of my way to see one of his movies since. But I suspected I'd get around to Elvis eventually, and having it show up on the slate of Best Picture Oscar nominees made "eventually" come now.

Elvis is, obviously, a biopic of singer Elvis Presley that covers his career from discovery to death. It's over two-and-a-half hours long -- and in true Baz Luhrmann fashion, has enough glitz, flash, and glamour to fill twice that amount of time and space. And even though one of America's most beloved actors, Tom Hanks, has a key role throughout, the one everyone is talking about is Elvis himself, Best Actor nominee Austin Butler.

But first, Luhrmann -- who is up to his usual antics here. Elvis features wild split screens, odd juxtapositions, nested flashbacks, direct address to camera... all manner of cinematic tricks. These things aren't rare or revolutionary, but you don't see them often, and you certainly don't see them all in the same movie. This big "grab bag" approach to making the movie helps shake up the biopic genre, which can be pretty rigid.

Yet it often does feel like just "cinematic tricks" in Elvis. All this style is evident everywhere, to the exclusion of substance. Perhaps this movie would mean more to me if I were just a bit older and could truly have known the real Elvis Presley's career? In any case, I just found the emotion really lacking all throughout the movie. Elvis felt to me like it lived in the long shadow cast by Moulin Rouge, almost like another director doing an homage and falling short of the original genius.

Although... I can readily believe that Austin Butler gives one of the five best performances of 2022, and if you're interested in that? You really have to see Elvis. Plenty of performers have impersonated other celebrities on film, running the gamut from "fastidious accuracy" to "passable pastiche." But even the people on the accurate side of things can't always put together the whole package -- speech, look, mannerisms. And even many who do can  feel like they've crossed some sort of line into caricature.

Austin Butler somehow manages to just be Elvis (at least, to my eyes and ears). And of course, he has singing in the mix to up the degree of difficulty. (And lip syching. Reportedly, some of the performances in the movie are a fusion of Elvis' real vocals with Butler's take.) In a movie that's over the top in almost every way, this performance as Elvis Presley somehow, impossibly, comes off as one of the most grounded and realistic elements.

Still, that's just one element in a decidedly mixed bag. Elvis hasn't really turned me back around on Baz Luhrmann again; I'd give it a C overall. But I will be curious to see if it takes home any awards on Oscar night.