Time noise In the review on 'Dune' I wrote that the experience of watching the blockbuster Villeneuve can be compared with the first trip to the cinema on ' Lord of the Rings' Peter Jackson. If you use a similar analogy again, then watching the film ' Elvis' you can put on a par with the first hike to ' Forrest Gump', ' Titanic' or there' Rainman' some. Yes, just like that, after almost three hours of the first feature film in nine years, Baz Luhrmann wants to immediately build ' Elvis' on the pedestal of great Hollywood films. This film makes such a strong impression that with a different mood, level of caution, inflated expectations, or simply because of Mercury retrograde, you can safely hate it with the same force. That's just the director's style is so dominant here over the plot, timing and authenticity that there is no doubt: another ' Elvis' from Baz Luhrmann could not be in nature. Here you have to either submit to the uncompromising power of the director, or write angry comments about ' everything was not so, I will go to watch a biopic from John Carpenter' (to find out that everything was wrong there, too). Well, I can now safely say that the creator 'Moulin Rouge', 'The Great Gatsby', 'Romeo+Juliet' and now 'Elvis' I think I can rightly call one of my favorite directors. That’s the level of analytics today.
From the first seconds, Luhrman proclaimed the dominance of the author’s form over the content. No, seriously, literally from the first few seconds. What complaints can there be about the film's chosen directorial style, which has even the first Warner Brothers production logos appearing in ruthlessly eye-cutting kitsch decoration. Either you wear special glasses so you don’t get blinded by the glow of the emerald town, or you suffer the remaining two and a half hours. But why should we suffer when we can have fun, we're not watching Pasolini, are we? The first and most important thing to realize before watching ' Elvis' (if you want to be morally ready, in general, this idea will be confidently sold to you from the beginning of the film) is not a film about Elvis Aron Presley (an American singer and actor, one of the most commercially successful performers of popular music of the XX century, also known as the “king of rock and roll”, and other facts from Wikipedia). Or rather, of course, about him, but about ' Elvis' (in quotes and without a surname) performed by Austin Butler in the lens of the story of Baz Luhrmann. We have here the eternal history of Faust and Mephistopheles, Paganini and Satan, the Master and Woland. From the very beginning of the picture about his youth, the history of his career ascent and life, it is actually not Elvis, but the character of Tom Hanks - Colonel Tom Parker, a Mephistopheles figure who produced the entire career of the king of rock and roll. We have here not a biopic of Elvis Presley with illustrations of facts from Wikipedia about was born / baptized / died, but the story of the artist and his masterpiece, where the artist is Hanks, and his work, in fact, ' Elvis & #39; (again in quotation marks and without a surname). Not Elvis Presley, but ' Elvis' as a brand, as huge glowing letters on the poster of expensive casinos in Vegas. And the main character of this story is exactly Colonel Parker, judge for yourself: the first in the film appears Tom Hanks as a voiceover surrounded by figures of clowns and postcards with disfigured grotesque parodies of Elvis (weakly reminiscent of a real singer, like Austin Butler, as the whole story of this film is faintly reminiscent of a biopic of Presley). The whole narrative is conducted only on behalf of the colonel, and in the flesh he appears before the viewer in the middle of a cane with a cane and in the hat of a street figure controlling the performance of dancing chickens. Hanks here is a caricature of a Cohen character, he resembles either John Goodman from ' Inside Llewyn Davis' and 'Barton Fink' or even his own role from 'Game of Gentlemen' Elvis himself here is a mythical figure as some kind of superhero - even his past is told to us through comic books. Most of all, this movie is similar to 'Sin' Andrei Konchalovsky, about the miserable old Michelangelo creating a perfect statue of David from a perfect piece of granite. Claims to Elvis can be presented the same as to the film 'Dovlatov' Alexei German: why did not show so many important biographical scenes from the life of the writer, what is this movie about, and where is Dovlatov behind all this? The same questions can be asked by the way and the film 'Summer' Serebrennikova and 'Manku' Fincher, but what is the point in them, if it is clear that the author did not set himself the task of filming a Wikipedia page about a famous person. People are divided into two types: those who for some reason like the film, sorry, ' Jobs: The Empire of Seduction' (where consistently and uninterestingly showed the biography of the creator of Apple) and those who appreciate Danny Boyle’s masterpiece with Michael Fassbender, from which we learn much more than the date of birth and appearance of the celebrity’s parents. Here'Elvis'Lurman Base for Second Men. But not only because of the chosen method of storytelling - this movie, like all of Luhrmann's paintings, is simply corny impressively made. It is difficult to take your eyes off the riot of colors and images, hurricane editing and intentionally kitschy style. And don't forget that it's all to the great music of Elvis Presley. Absolute magic of cinema, when the film does not act according to any rules, but exists in some unique stream. What difference does it make that you did not show some element of the biography of the singer, if the performance of Austin Butler & #39; Can't help falling in love' knocks goosebumps and tears out of the body. All this for some reason was enough for the audience and the Oscar Committee in a creatively castrated film about Freddie Mercury, so in the creatively unbridled crazy & #39; Elvis' certainly should impress.
After the success of the glossy and unideal ' Bohemian Rhapsody', all the merit of which in the great music of the Queen group, a bunch of similar films about musicians blossomed (' Rocketman', ' David Bowie: Man from the Star' coming ' The Thrill is On' about B.B. King). All of this is reminiscent of the standard yellow cover book about a popular band in a special section 'Read City' - if the band has enough fans to buy a ticket to the concert, they will buy both a film adaptation ticket and a theme book at the same time. What does Elvis Baz Luhrmann look like in this context? ' The Noise of Time' Julianne Barnes: sometimes cranberry, sometimes historically not very accurate, but masterfully written novel about the great composer. Would you say I gave you some wildly pathetic example? Well, the movie is the same pathos, I repent, impressed.
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