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Director: Baz Luhrmann. Subject: Baz Luhrmann, Jeremy Donner. Screenplay: Baz Luhrmann, Jeremy Donner, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce. Photography: Mandy Walker. Editing: Jonathan Redmond, Matt Villa. Art Direction: Karen Murphy, Katherine Martin. Music: Elliot Wheeler, Anton Monstad. Cast: Austin Butler (Elvis), Tom Hanks (Colonel Tom Parker), Helen Thomson (Gladys), Richard Roxburgh (Vernon), Olivia DeJong (Priscilla). Production: Baz Luhrmann, Kathryn Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCornick and Schuyler Weiss for Markmark, The Jackal Group. Duration: 159′
Hyperbolic. Excessive. immeasurable chaotic. extreme. These are some of the most frequent epithets in Elvis-related reviews and analyses, the film Australian director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby) dedicated to the life and legend of Elvis Presley. (…) Elvis is a tsunami because with his immense energy he destroys all the biopic models ever seen on the screen. This creates a clean slate. and invent a new model. experience it. This tests it. And it does so without fear of showing off the somewhat sumptuous and even decorative elegance that is characteristic of Rococo. Just take the beginning: Luhrmann breaks up, cuts, multiplies the split screen, you find yourself looking at four or even five windows/frames at the same time; The montage is dramatic rather than frantic, images form and collapse, vision becomes lysergic and kaleidoscopic, colors pile up, lights explode, graphics play, separate and surround, like a roulette wheel. The inside reaches to frame Elvis’ face which then turns out to be a disc. But then there’s the color that begs the black-and-white counterpoint, the graphic novel design etched into live shots, a red circle with the Kubrickian eye of the Hal 9000 emerging and re-immersing from the background, while the soundtrack As soon as the notes from the first chapter of 2001: A Space Odyssey ring out, for one. Our eyes are overwhelmed. Enchanted, fascinated, stunned. As if Luhrmann wanted to offer us a journey toward success: a vivid illustration of how indifference to fame, to the stage, to the fans, can turn into a deadly weapon of self-destruction. ,
In the film, two registers clash constantly: the shimmering part of the stage, with its frenzied crowd of fans, panties flying across the stage, lights, glitter and sequins, and the idol’s pelvic motion, a programmatic derailment of the senses that creates a certain Rock does not disdain the kitsch of aesthetics; And next to it the most intimate and private register of fragility, fear, weakness, the register of broken dreams and impossible love.
(…) It’s an Elvis roller coaster, someone said. Fact: Eye moves up and down, moves around, rotates, bounces, wiggles, overflows. The pulse quickens, the sweat breaks out and the music drives the tempo. Elvis’ interpreter, the young, extraordinaire Austin Butler, personally performs a few songs from Elvis’ repertoire, but then looks at the soundtrack and asks for collaborations from a variety of artists including Eminem, Chris Isaak and our menskin for If I Can. Explain the cover. Dream Between concert and concert, song and song, the story of this poor boy, son of a white family living in a black neighborhood, who from childhood was attracted to gospel and blues, great comes from history. (…) And Elvis chose not to stand and watch: “When you can’t say anything, sing it”. And he sings. He can’t do anything about it. He sings until the end, when something mysterious (probably addiction to success and fan love…) takes him away forever at only forty-two years old.
Gianni Canova
Evening promoted by Esorikambi