Elvis (Baz Lurhmann, 2022) (Patreon)

Although Elvis is generally better than one might expect, it's strangely shapeless and ungainly. Luhrmann and his three co-scriptwriters have some trouble deciding exactly what sort of film they want to make, and the result is a kind of compromise between print-the-legend mythmaking (the first third) and a chronicle of steady decline, greatness marred by greed (the final two-thirds). It probably goes without saying that the first part is far more exhilarating, as we see the Boy King drinking deep from the well of Memphis' Black culture -- blues, gospel, early soul -- and locating his own brand of swagger, the mix of sacred and profane that took this music out of the church and into the honky-tonks.

The veracity of this origin story is matter of debate, to say the least. Elvis works overtime to show Presley (Austin Butler) practically baptized in a culture that in many respects he exploited for his own gain. Luhrmann isn't interested in that controversy, though, since it would complicate the picture he wants to present, one of art despoiled by a dark foreign Mabuse figure, the nefarious Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). In fact, the polarity that organizes Elvis between authentic (Black) Southern culture and the rootless hucksterism of Parker is a myth that runs deep in American ideology, with Presley's supposed adjacency to true soul representing a kind of neo-rockist position. Parker's discovery of "merchandise" is the turning point that turns popular culture into "mass culture," and in Elvis's back end there's not much to do but watch the machine tediously grind the man down.

The fact that Elvis is framed by Parker's sad final days only shows just how confused this film is. By positioning the film as a sort of deathbed reverie, with its sympathy-for-the-devil implications, Elvis acts as if we don't know that Parker was the template for all the subsequent Svengalis of the music industry, from Malcolm McLaren to Lou Pearlman. This is Luhrmann's The Wall, and it performs the magic trick of separating capitalism from racism, paradoxically allowing the Jim Crow South to learn from Las Vegas.