Elvis 2022: An Analysis

Elvis. The name itself strikes a specific image in the hearts of everyone who has heard it. For some, Elvis was a silly, comical crooner who ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and fried pickles in his Memphis home. For some, Elvis was the name of a legend, a star who burned too brightly, too quickly, and fell too hard. For some, he was the man whom our mothers and grandmothers would drop anything to be with. Others see that name as a disgrace to the canon of ‘Rock and Roll’, a corporate sell-out who stole songs from the people who deserved recognition.

All of these facets are true, in a sense. In his 2022 movie, creatively named ‘Elvis’, Baz Luhrmann uses his theatrical and dramatic sense of storytelling to uncover the true story of Elvis or perhaps, a truer version of the well-known story.

I waited about a month to see this movie after most of the opening hype had died down. People around me who had seen it said it was a masterpiece, an Oscar-worthy film that was a summer ‘must watch’. People who loved Elvis loved this movie. People who had no opinion of Elvis but loved Austin Butler, who played the titular role, loved this movie. My own grandmother, who had despised Elvis her whole life, calling him ‘greasy’, wanted to see this movie.

I walked into the theater as a fan of neither, but as a fan of the director himself, Baz Luhrmann. I trust Luhrmann. I understand the vision for the movies he had created in the past, like Moulin Rouge (2001) and Romeo + Juliet (1996). They were all like regular movies that had been covered in Dolce & Gabbana Clothes, then injected with caffeine and sleep deprivation. Elvis seemed like a good choice for a movie of his: extravagant, otherworldly, even mythic.

The movie, however, starts unexpectedly. Like all Baz Luhrmann movies, this movie is guided by a narrator's help. The narrator for this movie is Tom Hanks in a fat suit, no joke. Immediately, I felt as though I had walked into the wrong theater. Fat-suit-Tom-Hanks portrays a former circus performer named ‘Colonel Tom Parker’, who becomes Elvis’s manager, and a sort of antagonistic father figure in his later years.

He narrates, in a very misguided Polish accent, that young Elvis was inspired by the local African American parish, who taught him that rowdy music is a form of worship and ultimately, freedom. Young Elvis has a holy experience at a church service in a tent on the outskirts of town, and we move swiftly into more Fat Suit Tom Hanks, which no one in the audience was expecting when they paid for their tickets.

There’s a flash-forward about ten years, right before Elvis’s professional life starts, as fat suit Tom Hanks hears ‘That’s All Right’ on the radio for the first time.

Through the use of approximately 30 montages, Elvis’s full life is revealed, including his marriage to a woman (a girl) ten years his junior, his blatant theft of African American music, his copious drug use to deal with the death of his mother, and the stress of being really cool.

The best scene (or group of scenes) is the comeback special section of the film. The dichotomy between the smiling faces on the 1968 TV screen versus the mutual disdain between Elvis and his manager concerning his future image —either as a rebel or an all-American-boy— comes into full fruition as Elvis returns to his roots as a king of controversy. Even though I thought I knew a good amount of Elvis trivia, this surprised me. I can’t say that this is only good writing on Luhrmann and his writing team’s part —this is a real thing that happened in 68’— but using Luhrmann’s specific editing style, it just flows so beautifully. I, sitting in that theater surrounded by loud, Elvis-loving old women, wanted to stand up and clap after Austin Butler performed ‘If I Can Dream’ in front of those gigantic, red, neon letters.

I must mention Austin Butler, who deserves an Oscar (or multiple) for this role. Somehow, an actor that I recognize as a recurring character in the later seasons of ‘Zoey 101’ became Elvis. Reading about this movie, there was a lot of press on how multiple prominent actors auditioned for the role of Elvis, including Top Gun: Mavericks Miles Teller, and Singer/Actor Harry Styles. I’ll admit that Miles Teller looks a lot more like Elvis and Harry Styles is actually a musician, but now, when I think about Elvis, I imagine Austin Butler.

Most of the complaints that people have for this movie are not purely of the film, but of the man himself. Elvis was a controversial figure. Young people in the 50s thought of him as a god, whereas young people now mostly see him as a relic of an old time, maybe even an offensive and appropriative person, but Elvis is a juggernaut. It is very hard for him to be quantified, and I think that with all its faults, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis tries its hardest to portray him as a man with faults and fears, not an intentional bigot.

When Baz Luhrmann creates a movie, he makes a show out of it. Cinema, for him, is a space where your mind can leave your body and live in a different place for just 2 hours. The goal of Elvis was not to make you an Elvis fan or to sympathize with him, it was to make you understand the phenomenon that is Elvis Presley.

Every shot, every movement, and every line in this movie is intentional. At the very end of the film, when Elvis is singing ‘Unchained Melody’ for the last time, slowly playing the piano on the Rushmore Civic Center stage, the scene switches. For one of the first times in the movie, you see actual, real-life Elvis. Luhrmann uses archival footage for the last 3 minutes of the movie, showing how every single scene was true to life; how every storyline was not created but adapted. Then, the screen shows Elvis’s tombstone as he passes on into legend on August 16, 1977.

But Austin Butler never dies as Elvis. Austin Butler isn’t even playing Elvis. Austin Butler is playing the memory of him, and that will never, ever die.