[ad_1]
I love Elvis Presley songs. I love his iconic voice. I love his iconic aesthetic, both in his early days and in his Vegas period. I also (mostly) love Baz Luhrmann. So the odds that I would enjoy an over-the-top director’s film about an over-the-top musician were pretty high. The film successfully delivered the dazzling, dizzying musical spectacular I hoped for. This may seem like a strange pick to anyone who expected something else from a film about Elvis — perhaps a more critical perspective on his debt to African American music, his young bride, or his drug addiction. Not me, not now at least. Turns out I was craving sensory overload from something that wasn’t a superhero movie (although the beginning of the film actually frames Elvis as a superhero whose power is music), and I honestly just had a good time watching Austin Butler croon and wiggle his hips before a crowd of shrieking, lusty white women whose libidos erupt one by one like kernels of popcorn. It reminded me that as society evolves, so do views of what is transgressive. Presley’s early rise is motivated by a desire to take care of his family financially, as his father had gone to prison when he was a child, but his mother warns him, “Do not wear yourself out to get rich.” We know how it ends. Elvis gradually loses the people who love him most: first his mother, then Priscilla and Lisa Marie. By the end, he is alone except for his band and audience, tethered to a grand stage. Luhrmann’s heroes often meet their ends tragically — in Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, and Gatsby — but the director’s tender use of real footage from the King’s 1977 performance of “Unchained Melody” in the final moments of the film — strained and sweaty but ever committed to performing just weeks before he would die — reminds the audience that unlike Luhrmann’s other protagonists, Elvis was a real man. All the energy, pain, and sadness Luhrmann channels dazzlingly into his film can be found right before any of us. —Venessa Wong
The Banshees of Inisherin
[ad_2]
Source link