In ‘Elvis’ they appear all the situations and details expected in an Elvis Presley ‘biopic’: his passion for black music, recordings on Sun Records, fame, rebellion, sexual charge, conflicts with the most puritanical sectors, military service in Germany, Priscilla Presley, Hollywood, television specials, the cage of gold that the Las Vegas International Hotel became for him, his addiction to pills and his death at the age of 42. All of this in the style of Baz Luhrmann, more restrained than in ‘Moulin Rouge’, but using dizzying montages, divided screens and musical hodgepodge -the Elvis voice confronted to the rapper Nardo Wick in ‘In the ghetto’– to undermine the foundations of the traditional biographical film.
It is also a film told through the Colonel Parker’s infamy, the businessman who profited from him and blew him up for life. The speech is somewhat simple: the existence of Elvis was so unfortunate because of Parker, with the consent of Presley’s father, that he does not come off better. “Without me, Elvis Presley would not have existed,” says Parker, who was neither a colonel nor a US citizen. A fraud that, on the other hand, Luhrmann uses to discuss a fraudulent company. the scene with Elvis boy fascinated by a blues performance and a gospel massthe provocative performance with the theme ‘Trouble’ -Elvis violated the laws of segregation by dancing like a black!- and the recording of the 1968 television special are those great moments that Luhrmann has accustomed us to.