As a Presley biography, “Elvis” isn’t particularly illuminating. The essential is there, as on Wikipedia. Elvis is haunted by the death of his twin brother, Jesse, and devoted to his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). Relations with his father, Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), are more complicated. The boy grew up in poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, and Memphis, ended up in the Sun Records recording studio at age 19, and set the world on fire. Then there is the Army, the marriage with Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), Hollywood, a comeback broadcast in 1968, a long residence in Las Vegas, the divorce with Priscilla and the sad and bloated spectacle of her last years.
Butler is fine with the few moments of off-stage drama the script allows, but most of the emotional action is telegraphed in Luhrmann’s usual bombastic, breathless style. The actor looks most fully Elvis — as Elvis, the film suggests, was truly himself — in front of an audience. Those hips don’t lie, and Butler captures the smoldering physicality of Elvis playing him, along with the playfulness and vulnerability that drove crowds wild. The voice can’t be imitated, and the movie doesn’t try wisely, remixing the actual recordings of Elvis rather than trying to replicate them.
At his first big performance, at a dance hall in Texarkana, Ark., where he shares a bill with Hank Snow (David Wenham), Snow’s son Jimmie (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and others country artists, Elvis steps out in a hot pink suit, heavy eye makeup and a sparkly pompadour. A guy in the audience yells a homophobic slur, but after a few bars, that guy’s date and all the other women in the room are screaming at the top of their lungs, “having feelings she’s not sure she should appreciate. “, as the colonel says. Gladys is terrified and the scene carries a heavy load of sexualized danger. Elvis is a modern Orpheus, and these maenads are about to tear him to pieces. In another scene, back in Memphis, Elvis watches Little Richard (Alton Mason) rip “Tutti Frutti” (a song he’ll cover later) and sees a kindred spirit.
