"Elvis" Review: Austin Butler Shines - the Movie Does Not

Luhrmann brings his signature glitz and glam - it's heart "Elvis" lacks.

July 18, 2022

On January 10, 1956, Elvis Presley stepped into the recording booth at RCA Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee. He’d brought a song he intended to record without the studio executives’ knowledge: “Heartbreak Hotel," written by school teacher Mae Boren Axton and singer-songwriter Tommy Durden. The duo couldn't find a singer willing to record the track: the song’s lyrical content was considered too morbid.

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Eventually, they presented the song to Presley, who loved the demo. The problem now was convincing everyone it could be a hit.

At RCA, there was a mandate that singers stood still during recording to ensure all sound got picked up by the microphone, but Presley’s style had one of its own: movement. He “had to jump around to sing it right,” Presley said. Producer Steve Sholes, already unsure of the song’s commercial viability, re-miked the studio to accommodate Presley. After recording, the higher-ups were beside themselves: one of them insisted that "Heartbreak Hotel" never get released.

But it did, and to much attention. It was a massive chart success (topping the Billboard Hot 100 for eight consecutive weeks) and a lightning rod for controversy. The BBC outlawed the song on British radio, deeming it “unfit” for general listening audiences. The sentiment would not prove uncommon: disgusted crowds in St. Louis and Nashville burned Presley in effigy following his raucous concerts. He had a style entirely his own, loaded with thrusting hips and sexualized vocals. Nothing he did fit the mold, and many feared the effect he was having on young women, who swooned at the sight of the greased hair and melted at the seductive southern drawl.

It was a different time. Women lived by man’s will and in a fashion palatable to the patriarchy. Sex was duty, individualism was condemnable, and feminism virtually non-existent. Men decided what was best for women, and the effect Presley had was encouraging thoughts of everything by which powerful white men could not abide, including those of racial equality.

In 1948, three years after World War II and six before Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that banned segregation in United States public schools, Elvis and his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, home of Beale Street, the birthplace of Blues.

The teenage Presley loved black music, clothes, and culture. He learned to play guitar under the tutelage of a neighbor and drew inspiration from white country artists like Ernie Tubb and Jimmie Davis, but also befriended future "Stand By Me" singer B.B. King. Elvis' recordings would draw influence from both white country and black R&B singers: a white man in the 1950s helped legitimize his black peers to white, southern audiences.

Elvis had the charisma to thrive in any era, but his legacy got manufactured by the moment. He could swing those hips like none other, and those gyrations thrust themselves into the “hearts” of women across America, but as a wise man once said, “Great moments are born from great opportunity.” The most viable market is the one untapped. America was free from the horrors of World War II: the next generation was ready to embrace everything the suffering had brought. The old notions of proprietary would not suffice; they wanted rock, roll, and sex.

As with any revolutionary, he faced opposition. In April 1956, weeks after a performance for The Milton Berle Show aboard the USS Hancock, he began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. On the Hancock, the younger audience raved; in Sin City, the older, conservative audience was appalled.

Following a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the local Catholic archdiocese sent a letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, urging him of the danger Presley’s presence posed to the American public.

“Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ... [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth…”

In fairness, Elvis courted a 14-year-old girl when he was 24, eventually married her, and fathered their child. Still, the idea that adolescents, whose existence is, always has been, and always will be defined by the ease with which they become aroused, should get shielded from the inevitable seems foolish. Alas, it did not stop the conservative public from crying wolf, nor did it stop Presley from inciting their fury. In June, he returned to The Milton Berle Show; Berle advised him to leave his guitar backstage and show himself off to the audience. Presley agreed, took to the stage, and performed “Hound Dog” with double the unholy gyrations; the result was twice the controversy. It is a cycle to which we all fall victim; the young clamor for advancement, the old insist on the status quo, and the two warring factions battle to the inevitable result: the young win. If one wanted to trace the counterculture of the 60s, filled with racial unity and free love, to its origin, examining Elvis’ role in the nation’s sexual liberation is a solid starting point.

It’s unfortunate that so much needs to get said about Presley, the time he both lived in and transformed, and just how he was able to alter the trajectory of both music and American history.

Elvis should have done that for us.

The moment must get honored if we are to comprehend the reason for and scope of Elvis’ cultural impact. After all, despite 159 minutes of thematic indecision, the film reveals its intentions in the closing crawl. Colonel Tom Parker, the villainous viper that exploited Elvis to satisfy his gambling debts, has the sad reality of his final years displayed in muted silver. Elvis, the King of Rock ‘n Roll, the best-selling solo recording artist in history, has his legacy shown in bold gold. Elvis is supposedly a movie about the man and how high he soared. It serves him poorly by not ever being about that at all.

Style is often the death of substance; in Lurhmann's case, it’s glitz, glam, quirk, and affectation all rolled into one. It’s the cartoon or newspaper transitions that signify a leap in time or the adoration for Captain Marvel that incites Elvis to strike a deal with Parker. The musical anachronisms prevent us from appreciating the restrictions of the time, the very thing that allowed Presley to surge into the national consciousness. It can be a welcome sight in a cinematic world where films get sent through an artistic filter. It can also be the death knell for a film of this ambition. Elvis spends its first half feeling like a cinematic acid trip. When it tries to settle, it gets exposed: if you prioritize style over substance, you won’t have time to tell a convincing narrative.

Elvis could get excused if it made no effort to tell such a narrative, but its desperation is plain. The popping of pills, leaving of wives, and betrayals of family and friends mean something, and the movie wants to make a statement on precisely what that “something" is, but it gets corrupted by too many artistic add-ons. Presley’s life takes dark turns and gets characterized by the highs as much as the lows. Luhrmann attaches his signature flair to make us think his film is that rollercoaster ride, but it’s more a hopscotch through tragedy and a rejection of the man’s faults.

It ignores the predatory age difference between him and Priscilla, and everything that sinks him is the fault of something or someone else. Priscilla looks in agony as Elvis kisses every adoring woman at one of his Vegas shows but later testifies that she is indifferent to his philandering. She only leaves him because he’s become an addict. The movie sells it as Elvis getting stressed and turning to drugs, almost as if it were inevitable. The movie robs him of choices to avoid holding him responsible; thus, everything the film believes him to be cannot get taken seriously.

After all, Parker was the visionary, and the singers lining Beale Street in flashy clothes inspired Elvis' sound. The triumphant 1968 Christmas special that returns him to prominence is 20% Elvis getting fed up with Parker’s guidance and 80% other's ideas. Elvis wants to be a monument to the man but refuses to cover his life honestly and credits everyone else for his success. It wants us to marvel at the product and make all the connections despite the film insisting on telling and never showing.

The conflicting approach sinks Elvis. We get told of the brewing storm through newspaper clip montages and the imagery of a powerful white senator set before three hanging confederate flags at an anti-integration rally, but rarely does any wrinkle receive genuine development. A filmmaker can always assume an audience knows and that foreknowledge is enough to create an impact, but it is all in approach. If you begin hands-off, nuance will emerge. If you insist on getting viewed a specific way, you cannot make so many demands of your audience.

Elvis does manage the occasional visual justification; at a concert on a baseball field, Elvis defies Parker’s instructions to appease his detractors. The penalty for defiance is arrest and possible incarceration; if Elvis plays ball, they can resume “business as usual.” We know he won’t cave, that he’ll take the stage, gaze out at his adoring fans, unleash that hypnotic southern drawl, and thrust his hips through “Hound Dog.” Yet, the anticipation is palpable. It’s the darkness, lit only by stadium lights as the crazed screams of fans slowly build as Presley takes the stage. It’s our desire to see the man who changed music do precisely that. It’s Butler’s softness, vulnerable even moments before standing firm in defiance. If the rest of Elvis captured this magic, it would be a classic biopic.

As it is, it lets the man down, often feeling like a flipbook of American history meant to inspire reverence based on our familiarity with their historical implications. Martin Luther King, Jr. got assassinated in April 1968, and Senator Robert Kennedy just a few months later. Civil Rights Activists were getting killed when racial tensions had shifted from resentment to a principled stand. Elvis’ fusion of “white country and black rhythm and blues” ushered in a new era of music when just as many people fought for racial equality as set themselves against it.

We see Elvis speak with B.B. King, marvel at the soulful belts of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and lose himself in a passionate display of faith inside a Blacks-only church tent. We do not see the friendships forged, receive context for who these inspirations are, or what about the spiritualism of a Black church appealed to Presley over the conservatism of a white church. Tharpe was a bridge-gapper, much like Presley would become; her blending gospel classics with electric guitar allowed her to find success in much the same way as Elvis. Presley was a music man, and thus his movie should be a music film; that’s where you’ll find his strengths, weaknesses, inspirations, aspirations, triumphs, tragedies, and everything he did for the people who both loved and loathed him.

Unfortunately, Elvis uses the music as a backdrop. You will not leave knowing the influence of “Heartbreak Hotel,” the impact of “Hound Dog,” or the true “why” behind the shock value of his signature performance style. Thus, as we close, we appreciate everything Austin Butler did to carry the burden of Elvis. A man who sold 600 million records and plunged millions into deep mourning upon his death is not an easy one to portray. Elvis cannot live and die on his account: it is too sprawling and insistent for a single actor to determine its fate. It does, however, live as fully as it does by his talent; the electricity when Elvis performs and jolts us into mania is a shockwave of his creation. Occasionally, he gets some moody staging or corny 60s pomp to make the moment pop, but Butler is the heart and soul not by playing Elvis but genuinely becoming the legend.

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Unfortunately, there's an entire movie with which he must contend. A biopic must depict its subject faithfully. The genre offers the most complex mode of filmmaking because it challenges us to combat who we hold dear. Our heroes are infallible, incapable of wrongdoing, and utterly above reproach. It’s how Michael Jackson, despite numerous accusations of child sex abuse, retains a loyal fanbase who refuses to acknowledge any validity to the claims. It’s how R. Kelly, who groomed and married a teenage Aaliyah and taped himself urinating on a 14-year-old girl, went legally unblemished for decades before finally getting tried, convicted, and ultimately imprisoned last year.

Everyone is flawed; the owner of your beloved mom and pop pizzeria, the plucky fourth-grade teacher who cheated on her husband and ran off with the vice principal. How about your parents, who seem like superheroes in your youth but, as you age, expose more flaws than you can count? Actors and musicians are the same way. Steven Tyler bought a teenage girl from her parents, committed innumerable counts of statutory rape, turned her into a drug addict, manipulated her into an abortion and dumped her back on her parents' doorstep. Jimmy Page statutorily raped a 14-year-old girl when he was 28 and remained in a “relationship” with her for several years.

Presley was 24 when he began courting Priscilla; she was 14. He refused to sleep with her after she gave birth to their daughter, cheated on her constantly, and allegedly lured numerous teenage girls into sexual encounters. He was also the country’s foremost musical sensation, revolutionized the industry, bridged gaps in a nation torn apart by racial inequality, and was beloved enough to draw over 25% of the world’s population to his live concert, Aloha from Hawaii. Elvis could have upheld some principle by acknowledging the whole truth and forced us to ask what exactly his impact is worth. Did he deserve President Carter issuing a statement of mourning upon his death in 1977? Does he deserve a film that sanitizes his character and devotes itself to spectacle? In a sense, the sensationalization is in line with Elvis as we know him, but crediting the movie with this would be assuming something it does not justify. Elvis had the talent in its leading actor to be the best biopic ever made but settled for being another entry in cinematic hero worship.