Elvis (2022)

 

Like so many of the movies directed by Baz Luhrmann, Elvis is a wild pastiche of moments that add up less to a fully coherent narrative than to an overwhelming emotional response. Sure, we do get many key moments in the life of the primary subject, Elvis Presley, but we also get a sense, a feeling if you will, of what it was like to be present during many of the events of his life that are depicted in the film. I wouldn’t turn to this film for a straightforward recounting of the events of Elvis’ life – although the film does touch upon some pretty significant moments of his life – but you can’t say that it’s not an exciting journey to take. It was one of the most thrilling movies to watch in 2022.

I’m going to address the least successful aspect of the film first, the portrayal of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ longtime manager, by Tom Hanks. Frankly, the film focuses too often on Parker instead of Elvis, and that’s to its detriment. Hanks is just not at his best in this performance, and the cartoonish accent doesn’t help. Most of the film is narrated by Parker through some sort of morphine-induced fever dream, so you might be willing to accept that some of the details might be fuzzy or less than historically accurate. However, having the man who is ostensibly blamed for getting Elvis hooked on drugs, ultimately leading to his death, seems like such an odd choice.

The film’s structure is mostly but not strictly chronological. We see how Elvis began touring as a young performer with Hank Snow, someone that anyone familiar with country music should know from “I’m Moving On.” As the show stops at various locations throughout the southern United States, you see Elvis’ billing keep getting higher and higher on the posters because he’s doing something that other white singers aren’t doing, playing what was then termed “black music” or “race music.” Of course, music is always more universal than it’s given credit for being, so when we see how Elvis as a young boy seems to have been struck (quite literally in this film) by the dual strains of blues in a juke joint he’s not supposed to be at and gospel music at a revival meeting, you sense how that blend of different styles will have an impact on his performances and why so many people responded to his music the ways that they did.

Austin Butler plays Elvis, and he doesn’t initially strike a viewer as really looking much like the King of Rock and Roll. However, when he shows up at a gig wearing a pink suit that makes him look quite beautiful, you see why the women in the audience respond in the, um, rather primal way that they do. The movie is really good at capturing the thrill of watching a live performance with the noise and the movement, and that is really one of the best aspects of the film overall. It’s tough to watch Butler sing “Baby, Let’s Play House” without feeling like you’re in the audience being overwhelmed by the shocking newness of Presley’s style.

We meet lots of people who influence Elvis besides Col. Parker, but they go by so quickly that you sometimes are retrospectively remembering how important or significant they were to his career. Sam Phillips at Sun Records, for example, started Elvis’ recording career. Well, a secretary at Sun Records probably deserves a lot of the credit, but Sam ran the company. We watch Big Mama Thornton performing “Hound Dog,” a song that Elvis would later make into a huge hit. And there’s brief moments featuring B.B. King, Little Richard, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but don’t blink or go to the restroom or you’ll miss their time on screen.

Because Elvis broke so many racial barriers and sexual taboos, everyone, it seems, tried to control him and his behavior, usually to little effect. One of the more interesting moments in the film happens in Mississippi, Elvis’ home state (and mine), when Senator Eastland tries to get him arrested. Rather than take the safe path, Elvis chooses to perform “Trouble.” The film features some great closeups of Butler as Elvis during this sequence, writhing on stage and deservedly earning the praise for his performance. He certainly gets the gestures and movements right, and the press frenzy that surrounded Elvis gets highlighted effectively in this sequence too.

One of the hallmarks of a Luhrmann film is quick editing. It leads to a blend of reality and hyperreality. The montages that show us how he reacted to becoming famous feature the womanizing and the drugs that became the fodder for lots of gossip. The 1960s is really almost a blur of images: the various bad movies into which Parker pushed him, his marriage and its dissolution, the birth of his daughter Lisa Marie, so many things. And then the film slows down a bit to let us see behind the scenes a bit for the so-called “comeback special.” Was Elvis ever sexier than when he wore that black leather suit? The Colonel wants a family-friendly special with “Here Comes Santa Claus” as the climactic moment, but Elvis is too troubled by what’s going on the world to concentrate upon something so frivolous. This was the period when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Jr. were assassinated. The performance of “If I Can Dream” – with Butler’s note-perfect rendition of how Elvis did the number originally – is truly a highlight of the film.

By the time the film gets to the Las Vegas years and the record-breaking residency at the International Hotel, we’re back to spending too much time watching what’s going on with Col. Parker and his mounting gambling debts. The use of split screens and multiple images during the reimagining of “That’s All Right, Mama” is reminiscent of the concert films that Presley released at the time. We get the obligatory depiction of “Suspicion Minds” in the white jumpsuit and of Priscilla’s departure from the marriage, but the key result of this sequence is Elvis learning the truth about the colonel’s background and how much of his money Parker had taken from him over the years. Elvis dies about sixteen minutes before the end of the film, leaving us to listen to Hanks as Parker rather than allowing us to feel grief over the loss of one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

The film Elvis was certainly well liked by the voters of the Academy, who nominated it for eight awards. However, it now stands as one of the most-nominated films in history to receive not even one Oscar. When you consider the film editing and the cinematography and the makeup and hairstyling and the costumes – the costumes! – as well as the great portrayals of Elvis performing his songs throughout this career, you’re left with a remarkable achievement. The film might have been at least 30-40 minutes shorter with less attention on Col. Parker, and that could have made the achievement even greater.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Austin Butler), Best Achievement in Hair and Makeup, Best Sound, Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Costume Design, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Production Design

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

 

Triangle of Sadness is an unexpected choice for inclusion on the list of nominees for Best Motion Picture of the Year. It’s certainly a very accomplished film from the award-winning Swedish director/screenwriter Ruben Ostlund. It’s also a pretty dark comedy with some rather bleak moments, and the audience keeps getting shocked by where the film goes. Overall, it’s quite an indictment of the rich and also a very stinging depiction of how badly we often treat each other. Maybe its inclusion is a sign that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have become more open to considering more unusual films as being award worthy.

The film features what would ordinarily be a typical three-part structure, but here each of the sections is a very distinctly different kind of story. Our focus keeps shifting with the start of each new section, which certainly keeps a viewer on their toes when we have, essentially, three different film genres to connect. “Part 1: Carl & Yaya” features a young couple, both of whom are models. However, Yaya (Charlbi Dean) makes much more money as a female model than her boyfriend Carl (Harris Dickinson) does as a male model. They fight a lot about money and gender roles, and you begin to suspect that the film might be some sort of examination of these issues. They don’t seem to have a very happy relationship – it seems rather toxic, actually – so we could perhaps even expect the film to be an examination of the nature of these kinds of relationships.

However, when “Part 2: The Yacht” begins, we see that the number of characters we’ll need to follow expands. We have the crew of a very expensive private yacht and a range of incredibly rich (and incredibly stupid) people. These rich people are just awful; they have such dumb thoughts in their heads. One of them claims that everyone is equal and, thus, the crew should have a chance to swim just like the wealthy patrons on the yacht do, and the crew has to accommodate their demands, no matter how ridiculous they might be and no matter how much it will interfere with the crew’s ability to do their necessary work. Thus, the preparations for the evening meal gets delayed and the confused crew members slide into the ocean one at a time and then return to their more menial but essential tasks.

It's quite the collection of oddballs on this cruise. There’s a woman who can only speak one sentence in German due to a stroke. There’s a Russian fertilizer salesman who gets into a puzzling debate with the captain over the virtues of capitalism vs. communism. One couple has made their money from selling explosives and weapons used by some of the worst world leaders. And one woman swears that the yacht, which is motorized, has dirty sails despite being assured by the captain and members of the crew that there are no sails. The captain, by the way, is played by Woody Harrelson, whose performance is quite as off kilter as you might expect from him.

The centerpiece of Part 2 is a disastrous Captain’s Dinner. Thanks to some poor choices based on trying to meet the demands of the rich people on board, it occurs in the middle of a violent storm and the food has spoiled because it’s been sitting on hold while the crew was forced into taking a dip in the ocean. You’ve not seen so much vomiting and diarrhea in a film in a while. It’s quite the punishment for the out-of-touch people on this yacht.

“Part 3: The Island” shifts the focus to a survival film. The ship has been destroyed by pirates, and most of the guests and crew have died. Only one person among the survivors seems to know how do anything, and she was the former toilet monitor on the ship – in other words, part of the bathroom cleaning crew. Abigail (played by Dolly De Leon) upends the class system, forcing the wealthy passengers to accept her as “the captain” before they receive any food. She also starts a sexual relationship with Karl in order to grant him food and privileges that he can share with Yaya. De Leon is magisterial in her performance. We may return to focusing on Carl and Yaya a bit more in this third part, but really, we care most about Abigail. De Leon gives what would be an award-worthy performance in any other year.

The ending of Triangle of Sadness is unexpected and rather inconclusive. Given its enigmatic nature, the ending doesn’t especially engender any sympathy for the characters who are still around. I’m not certain what could happen to them next, but I’m also not quite sure that I’d care to know what happens to any of them other than Abigail. Several of the films nominated for Best Motion Picture this year had these rather puzzling conclusions. Maybe that’s a trend for the 2020s to watch out for.

It’s somewhat interesting to note that the sequences on the yacht were filmed on a yacht used by Aristotle and Jackie Onassis. Talk about the wealthy and privileged; that boat must have some wild stories associated with it. It’s also sad that the actress who plays Yaya, Charlbi Dean, passed away before the film received its Academy recognition. I might not like the self-involved character that she plays, but Dean was certainly a talented actress who was still very early in her career.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Ruben Ostlund), and Best Original Screenplay