The new film by Baz Luhrmann will not disappoint and, moreover, will hit the heart!
The Australian director is criticized for his style, in which, as it seems at first glance, everything is over the top - and colors, and light, and colors, and heaps of sounds, and graphic elements (signs, inscriptions), and a chaotic change of scenery and costumes. In the first seconds (as at the beginning of this film), an unprepared viewer can have a head spin. But it is worth letting this carnival into you, surrendering to it, and allowing yourself to be carried away by a whirlwind of emotions, music, words, and dance. And this style - all so rollicking, torn, even twitchy, convulsively hysterical, colorful - ideally fits the fate of the king of rock and roll Elvis Presley.
To talk about Elvis, Luhrmann chose interesting optics and found a new look. He (and the viewer with him) looks at Presley through the eyes of the impresario of the artist - the mysterious Tom Parker, who in his youth illegally moved to the USA from the Netherlands, who hid his origin all his life, a talented manager, but a man, obviously, of shaky moral principles, greedy, dodgy, gambler, and swindler. And with such a person, the fate of young Elvis Presley brought him together, and Luhrmann gives a word to such a person, in some way an opportunity for confession. And this confession does not paint the confessor. He appears greedy for fame, success, and money, a bigwig who exploited talent for his own purposes, drove Presley to exhaustion and robbed him, and hooked his protégé on drugs. An extremely repulsive image is created, however, one should not forget that the director exaggerates somewhere, and mythologizes the figure of Tom Parker.
In more than two and a half hours, Baz Luhrmann takes the viewer on a tour of the important life milestones of the idol of generations: from his barefoot childhood in Memphis, his passion for Negro music, and his meeting with Colonel Parker, to takeoff, unprecedented fame, filming in Hollywood, protest performances, decline, career crisis, and triumphant return. The motif of borrowing music from black performers Elvis runs like a red line through the whole story - he earns hundreds of times more than they could do at that time in that country, he makes it possible to hear their voices, opens their music to the widest possible audience.
Elvis Luhrmann is a grease-lined boy in colorful costumes with music in his soul and dynamite in his feet, looking for his place in eternity. And he remains so until the very end, even knowing cosmic success, hysterical adoration of fans, getting rich, and becoming a star of music and cinema.
A few words should be said about the actors. Austin Butler is a 100% hit in the image of Presley, very similar both in appearance and in plastic. Clearly his main role so far. But, ladies and gentlemen, what the hell is Tom Hanks doing on camera again? Great actor, and has an outstanding role. The rest are all in their places, just less bright.
It is also important to note that Luhrmann again organically wove modern music into the music of the era he was reconstructing. The hits of Elvis Presley in his performance were complemented by the work of contemporary musicians - Eminem, who continues to hype Italian rockers M? neskin, rapper Doja Cat, country singer Casey Musgraves, Shonky Doukure, Swae Lee & Diplo, soul singer Jazmine Sullivan, an Australian group in the psychedelic genre rock Tame Impala, hip-hop artist Denzel Curry and many others. And even the lead actor, actor, and singer Austin Butler. And this mix added another color to the overall colorful canvas.
The result was a film carnival, a film with fireworks, and a film concert. A sight not to be missed. Baz Luhrmann already managed to get me hooked on a classic of American literature once. It seems that now he has done everything so that I finally touched the work of King Elvis Presley.
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