FILMS

Of all the filmmakers who could have made an Elvis biopic, it had to be one whose aesthetic is more Vegas bloat than Sun Studios leanness. Baz Luhrmann’s lives up to the swooning excess of his , even down to its digital diamanté-studded end credits. Less a narrative than a deluxe jukebox musical with touches of Douglas Sirk melodrama, is framed as a sort of deathbed reverie from Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s Dutch-born, Mephistophelean manager. He’s played by Tom Hanks with a bizarre, undefinable European accent, in makeup suggesting a cross between the Penguin and a papiermâché effigy of Rupert Murdoch. How Parker ‘created’, or rather enslaved Presley is the narrative drift, but the film’s real pleasure lies in its full-tilt comic-strip stylistics and a terrific performance by Austin Butler (a TV stalwart previously seen in Tarantino’s ). His Elvis is something of a coy innocent, less of a confident joker than the original, not quite aware of his powers, but rebellious when it comes to doing things his own way, as on the ’68 TV Comeback Special.