I enjoy Elvis Presley tunes. I enjoy his iconic voice. I enjoy his iconic visual, both in his early days and in his Vegas duration. I also (mainly) enjoy Baz Luhrmann. So the odds that I would delight in an excessive director’s movie about an excessive artist were pretty high. The movie effectively delivered the dazzling, excessive musical magnificent I wished for. This might seem like an unusual choice to anyone who expected something else from a film about Elvis– perhaps a more crucial point of view on his financial obligation to African American music, his young bride, or his drug addiction. Not me, not now a minimum of. Ends up I was craving sensory overload from something that wasn’t a superhero motion picture (although the beginning of the movie actually frames Elvis as a superhero whose power is music), and I honestly just had a good time seeing Austin Butler croon and wiggle his hips before a crowd of screaming, lusty white ladies whose sex drives appear one by one like kernels of popcorn. It reminded me that as society develops, so do views of what is transgressive. Presley’s early increase is motivated by a desire to look after his family financially, as his daddy had gone to jail when he was a kid, however his mom warns him, “Do not wear yourself out to get abundant.” We understand how it ends. Elvis gradually loses individuals who enjoy him most: first his mother, then Priscilla and Lisa Marie. By the end, he is alone other than for his band and audience, tethered to a grand stage. Luhrmann’s heroes frequently fulfill their ends unfortunately– in Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, and Gatsby– however the director’s tender usage of real video from the King’s 1977 efficiency of “Unchained Melody” in the final moments of the movie– strained and sweaty however ever devoted to performing simply weeks before he would die– reminds the audience that unlike Luhrmann’s other protagonists, Elvis was a genuine man. All the energy, discomfort, and sadness Luhrmann channels dazzlingly into his film can be found right prior to any of us.– Venessa Wong
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