Rezension von blakestachel

How could a three-hour film be so reductive? The Elvis, in Elvis, is but a sideshow attraction to Baz Luhrmann's insatiable thirst for style and his refusal to slow down even for a second. Characters come and go like ghosts in a museum. Even the death of his own mother passes by almost unregistered. Nearly every dramatic beat is fumbled in this way, lost in the dizzying miasma of form and the director's ego. Of course, Elvis himself was a spectacle, but to base the entire film on this principle prevents the biopic from doing its primary job. There isn't the slightest probe into the psyche of the man: what made him so complicated and why he compulsively attached himself to the blood-sucking parasite of Colonel Parker. It's a movie made in post, unfortunately, because what's in front of the camera compels. The gravitas that Butler conjures isn't allowed to sit with us for more than a few seconds at a time without Baz's ADHD-fueled sensory overload. Butler is good when allowed to be, but sadly, he's rarely the priority. After all, the film is told from the point of view of the Colonel for some incomprehensible reason.