We watched Baz Lurhman's "Elvis" last night. A ridiculous, misleading, wrong-headed "bio-pic." It is bold, flashy and trashy. Total Shite. I mean, so, so bad. We watched it to the end. Sort of like a pop culture car crash of a movie. And total Bullshit too. Even the scenes depicting "true-to-life" events come across as over-hyped, total fabrication. Nothing rings true. At all. There are lies in nearly every scene. Really. Leads one to want to re-evaluate all of Baz Luhrman's work, and all of Elvis' work too.
My new evaluation of both? Total B.S. All surface flash, with no substance. Looks good. But totally vacant.
I was not an Elvis fan when I was young. Elvis represented everything I despised about our crass-commercialized-over-heated-Capitalist-American Dystopia. Style and flash over any substance. Elvis seemed like a hollow, taste-less, momma's boy with a strange and haunting voice.
I did read Peter Guralnick's two volume biography of Elvis - (1994). Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley
Great books. An American Iliad and Odyssey It gave me more of an appreciation for what Elvis meant to music and pop culture. A supremely flawed human being caught up in an amazing swirl of unimaginable success. A weird, American story. And a myth. Kind of like the Old Testament of Pop. Stranger and richer than fiction.
Elvis was the great white whale of American Pop Culture. His short-lived r&r phase was hugely influential to some of the folks I really do admire, including John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Keith Richards.
Elvis did some amazing sessions at Sun Studios. It was mostly downhill from there, at least musically. But he was idolized, made into a "King" and became an overstuffed, ridiculous Vegas Marionette, packed to the gills with every narcotic invented by man. A lonely, hollow, uncultured, tasteless, & crass man surrounded by a brainless posse all living off his riches. I guess it truly is an All-American story. All the worst qualities of America distilled in one large, white, man.
Really, kind of a sad saga. Elvis was just human being. Kind of lame and shallow. Changed the world.
But Lurhman's film is an abomination. He seems to want to depict Elvis as relevant and "woke." He invents scenes and motivations that are totally phony and cringe-worthy. A crime against any semblance of truth, or even "artistic truth." Glitz and flash rules. Really, it is that bad, really, really bad. Hollow. Tasteless. Silly. Maybe worth watching as an illustration of complete B.S. on a grand scale.