I grew up in the 1950s, and heard him on the radio (AM stations playing pop music, of course) in the late part of the decade when Elvis was at his artistic peak. As a pre-teen, I wasn’t a fan of anyone in particular, but I liked what I heard of early rock & roll in general, including his music. It had spirit, guts, spark, and it annoyed my parents. As I entered my teens, Elvis was still around, making movies, making music, but so were others. He went from being the bad boy of rock to something more pastel, blander, less the rebel, more the establishment figurehead.

In the early-mid 1960s, as the “British Invasion” took over the airwaves, I was a fan of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and other UK bands. Elvis, by then, was the idol of older kids who had grown up with him. In the late ’60s, I was listening to psychedelic bands like the Velvet Underground, Mothers of Invention, and Jimi Hendix, while learning to play the guitar myself. Elvis wasn’t on any of my playlists, but then few of the early rock and roll performers were. I saw very few of his movies back then, but only when they came to TV.

I didn’t give Elvis much thought or listening time until much later, when I began to appreciate some of the earlier bands and their contribution to pop culture. In the 1970s and ’80s, I developed a new appreciation of performers like Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and, of course, Elvis (his early rockabilly music, at least: I never liked his spirituals, Christmas music, or most of his film music).

Elvis came, at least in spirit, to my hometown. In 1995, when the Collingwood Elvis Festival was started by tribute artist Billy Cann. That’s when I started paying attention, reading bios and histories, listening to his music, even watching his movies, trying to better understand what Elvis meant to so many. The festival became a huge success, drawing thousands of visitors every year, as well as media crews, some even from countries like China and Japan, and establishing itself as the major Elvis tribute competition worldwide. The popular annual Elvis festival lasted until 2019 when the myopic municipal council killed it.*

In 2022, the biopic Elvis was released, described as an “epic drama” that “explores the life and music of Elvis Presley as seen through the prism of Presley’s complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker.” I watched it on DVD earlier this month.**

Biopics too often seem reduced to either hagiographies or demonizing the subject; in this film we get a bit of both: the angel of Elvis and the demon of Parker. But we only glide over the surface of both, like a modern version of a medieval morality play.

In two-and-a-half hours, can any film capture the entire life of one man, his influences, his career, and his impact on society and culture? It can only give a series of incomplete snapshots, usually from a fixed perspective. Elvis is like that: the complexity of the man and his time are unseen; his life appears in brief snippets, often narrated by the manipulative grifter who became his manager, Parker. There is nothing in detail, although the film sometimes lingers on some scenes or aspects to emphasize a point.

We don’t get to learn much about Elvis’s initial steps into music or the music industry (nothing at all about his first manager), nothing more than a brief mention of the “Memphis Mafia,” the cabal of grifters and sycophants who hung around with Elvis, and like vampires sucked on his success, his money, and his fame. We don’t see the family moving from place to place as his father, Vernon, went from job to job (and into jail at one point). The complex rise and fall of his finances and Parker’s role in siphoning off so much are barely touched on. The film is like a stone skipping over deep water. ***

In the film (as in real life), Presley starts out as a radical explosion into pop culture, a challenger and threat to the established order, but soon comes off as a victim never quite in control, often lost, unsure, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes arrogant, emotionally stunted. He becomes a cartoon of himself. Austin Butler as Elvis does a great job of portraying the singer in his earlier years, but is less convincing as a mature Elvis trapped inside the manufactured image.

Tom Hanks plays a convincing carny hustler Colonel Parker (real name: Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk), but we don’t get to see past the caricature of him as the evil villain of the piece. Other people in his life, like his wife, Priscilla, his parents, or his band members, are generally 2D characters.

I’d rate the film 3, or maybe 3.5, out of five stars. Good but not great, likely not one I’ll re-watch. If I were not already familiar with at least some of the details of Elvis’s life, I might rate it higher, but I perhaps was watching for things that were either not covered or glossed over. I wanted more depth. Still, it’s worth watching if you have any interest in pop culture, rock and roll, or how life in the post-war world changed. Or if you just want a little more Elvis in your life.

Notes

* As an elected member of council for more than a decade during the festival’s heyday, I supported the event. I was even a member of the Elvis Festival committee for several years. It was a very popular, very successful event that drew thousands of visitors to the town to enjoy dozens of tribute artists who portrayed “The King” on local stages and in local venues. Unfortunately, a later council under the feckless Mayor Saunderson unanimously voted to kill the festival in April 2019, for no reason aside from them disliking the idea of people having fun (although a private operator had offered to take it over, they just wanted it gone). Without the festival, Collingwood lost an important economic driver that was never replaced. Among those who voted to kill the successful Elvis Festival were short-sighted councillors Deb Doherty, Yvonne Hamlin (now the current mayor, as feckless as her predecessor) and Kathy Jeffrey; all three running for re-election.

**  The movie stars Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as Parker. It is 2 hours and 39 minutes long.

*** I highly recommend the two-volume set, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick, “widely regarded as the definitive biography of Elvis Presley.” They detail the complex history and chain of events in his life, with insight into contemporary culture and politics.

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