“Elvis,” September 10, 2022, DVD. Baz Lurhmann co-wrote and directed this Australian-heavy (although Hugh Jackman’s not in it) biopic of The King starring Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks in a fat-suit and plenty of makeup as carnival barker and entrepreneur Col. Tom Parker. It was filmed on location in Australia at the start of the pandemic, and Hanks and his wife became two of the first prominent sufferers. This is the first time I’ve seen Hanks play an unsavory character, and while Parker helped ‘make’ Elvis, his abuse of Elvis via contract and psychological control make him deeply distasteful. It chronicles Elvis’s rise and his manipulation by Parker as well as his efforts to ‘free’ himself and follow his own instincts.
Butler has much of Elvis’s youthful charm; he sings on his own as the young Elvis and plays his openness and reworkings of African-American music caught in churches and dives well. His own voice is merged with The King himself as the character ages. It gives us a smart and supportive Priscilla (Aussie Olivia DeJonge) trying to help a legend become his own man. Sadly, drugged and paranoid, Elvis became little more than a trained carny ‘freak’ who lived to rescue the ringmaster.
I thought the film worked through to about 1970, but when Parker retakes control of Elvis’s career and turns him into a touring/performing caricature of himself, both it and Elvis become hollowed out and the ugliness and pathos of his last 6 years are, sadly, given less time than they deserve.