Elvis (2022)

The King is Dead. Long Live the King (Accept No Further Substitutions)

or

"You're a Devil in Disguise"

"The people gave their money and they gave their screams, but the Beatles gave their nervous systems, which is a much more difficult thing to give."

George Harrison

 

Baz Luhrmann is a favorite in these quarters for his brio and audaciousness, but his "throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks" approach to film-making can be off-putting to purists. Too many mash-up's, too many liberties taken with authenticity, too many anachronisms. 

 

Yeah, yeah. So what?

 

Baz Lurhrmann makes kaleidoscopic multi-media myths with the emotional histrionics of grand opera, and a design sense that is stuffed with equal parts sub-text and glitz. So, if Lurhmann was going to continue the trend of making movies dissecting the lives of pop artists (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman), he would laser-in on the career of Elvis Presley, the culture-described King of Rockn'Roll, who flashed like a meteorite in the the 1950's and crashed to Earth, dying at the age of 42.

Not everyone might know the story of Elvis, although they might know the prevailing culture—the hoardes of imitating Elvi, the wedding chapel versions, the general prevalence of over-the-top glitz, the rotation of movies on TCM, and maybe the vast catalog of music he produced. Presley was born in poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi and became a sensation in the fledgling field of rockabilly and Rockn'Roll, which he'd morphed from their origins in Rhythm n' Blues. His stage-work was what made him famous, as he dervished and swiveled on stage that sent bobby-soxers swooning and the morality police into over-drive. He became a pop sensation with equal efforts to exploit him and contain him—his first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" would only show him from the waist up.*

There was a brief period of inactivity after he was drafted into the Army (which became the origins of the musical "Bye-Bye, Birdie")—where he met his future bride, Priscilla at the tender age of 14—and once his tour was over returned to recording and a career making movies in Hollywood, which he found lucrative but ultimately unsatisfying as, after making a couple of dramatic roles (he idolized James Dean), he was relegated to made-to-order musicals to serve the fan-base but not much else.

To jump-start his career in the late 60's, he made a couple of television specials that recalled the old Elvis, pre-Hollywood, revived his recording career (and critical regard) and contracted a long-standing "residency" in the big International Hotel showroom in Vegas. The grueling schedule had a detrimental effect on his health, his marriage, and his life, and he began taking drugs—he'd previously sworn off any drugs or alcohol (there was a lot of alcoholism in his family)—to maintain his commitments. He finally succumbed to a heart attack.

By now, we've come to expect a bit of gloss in our musical bio-pics, especially when it comes to the darker aspects of celebrity (can't risk discouraging the ambitious, now, can we?) and Elvis has plenty of that. And it's not just in little details (Elvis is coerced into enlisting in the military to promote a wholesome image rather than—as the truth is—being drafted) so much in the big arc of the story—that Elvis (Austin Butler), a child inspired and enraptured by Rhythm and Blues and Gospel music, is enticed by success and then trapped in it by music promoter—and con-man—Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). There's a lot of truth in that—Parker was a rascal—but Elvis was not so much the innocent as portrayed in the movie. But, then, Luhrmann wouldn't have been able to match the story to more operatic roots.

And that opera is "Faust." Based on Goethe's play, it is about a philosopher who, to attain transcendence, makes a deal with the Devil at the cost of his soul. Here Col. Tom is the Devil, who tempts Elvis with fame and fortune, controlling his life—despite Elvis' repeated acts of rebellion—until the singer is contracted to endure a brutal performance schedule from which he cannot escape that will eventually kill him. The movie is narrated by Parker, who constantly makes the case that he is innocent of Elvis' fate, but the story is rife with evidence that he's a con man, a grifter, and—in a touch that's a little too much on the prosthetically enlarged nose—a provider of "forbidden fruit." Giving audiences, in his words, "feelings they didn't know they should feel." When he sees the audience's reaction to Elvis' jittery first stage performance, he stalks him in a carnival house of mirrors to propose his business deal, delivered at the top of a stopped ferris wheel. The pact is completed on a precarious foundation.

Hanks' performance, like his other rare villainous roles is over-the-top. Sporting a vaguely Germanic accent—Parker, whose real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, was Dutch—and swaddled in layers of latex, he is all twinkling malevolence and insinuation, always upping the ante for his targets and hedging his personal bets. Luhrmann has him rising from a hospital bed to descend to his own version of Hell, a darkened casino showroom festooned with slot machines; Parker was an insatiable gambler and used the Elvis fortune to pay off his soaring debts.

But every villain must have a sympathetic victim and Luhrmann's ace in the hole is Butler, whose prettified Elvis is all guileless mamma's boy. Butler resembles Presley in the all-important eyes, but his jawline and cupid bow mouth are more feminine than the real guy; the resemblance really kicks in when Butler sports a cocky grin—it's just that Luhrmann offers few opportunities for that expression. Except on-stage, and that's where Butler's performance goes full-tilt. In fact, when Luhrmann's directorial energy flags mid-stream that's when Butler's stage theatrics take over, giving the movie a boost right when it needs it most.

At times, it's uncanny; the director uses a lot of split-screens of archive footage of the hysterical crowd reactions (it would be tough to duplicate today) and every-so-often Elvis pops into it and it takes a moment to realize if it is Elvis Presley or Butler—it's always Butler until towards the end of the film when footage of the real singer is used in a montage of images culminating in a stage performance of "Unchained Melody" where a clearly out-of-shape and exhausted Presley gives a powerhouse performance and, making it through it, gives a delighted, spent smile to the audience. That footage alone slaps away any disparaging "fat-Elvis" comments and makes you realize what an amazing talent the man had...even at the end.

Which, ironically, makes Butler's performance that much more impressive. He sings during the concert footage and does a great job as an Elvis imitator (according to ABC News, there are more than 35,000 as of 2002—I wonder what the unemployment rate for them is after Covid?). Well, their job is just that much more difficult now. There can be no more half-measures, no lame karate moves. Butler rises to the occasion in the Elvis royalty; if not quite The King, certainly an excellent torch-bearer.

Oh, one other thing: Luhrmann makes an interesting through-line of the story, taking Elvis from a little kid fascinated with gospel and the devotional reactions of the congregation and extending it to its culmination in the International's Vegas show-room, seeing it as its own Church of Elvis and his own personal ecstasy—while for Parker it's his own personal Hell, both trapped in prisons of their own making.

 

Damned clever, that Luhrmann.

Okay. I'm leaving the blog-post. You've been a fantastic audience. (Thenkew! Thenkewvermuch.)

* They relented in his next appearance, but Presley toned down his act considerably, even knowingly teasing it.

The Power of the Dog

Gloves Off

or

"Well, Well...I Wonder What Little Lady Made This?"
 

Jane Campion knows her Westerns. You can tell that with an opening shot of The Power of the Dog, tracking along the windows inside a house, the interior black, but the outside bright with sunlight, focusing on the outsider walking along parallel to the side of the house, but not a part of it, echoing John Ford and echoing The Searchers, but in her own way.

 

Like Ford, she will play with light and shadow in her western, even depending on it for a visual motif that will form a sub-text in the film, and she will pay particular attention to landscapes that separate people and must be conquered if anything resembling civilization is to take root in that wilderness. Ford's westerns were all about that and the land he photographed was itself a character in that/those stories, not merely a back-drop, not location-for-location's sake. 

 

But, that's what she takes from Ford and goes her own, entirely different way, leaving him and the dream of civilization in the dust. For Campion, the world-building of westerns is as much a myth as the westerns themselves. Civilization is about what people decide to agree on, and if the point of rugged individualists is to play by their rules, there won't be much agreement. Or very little civil.

The man in the window is Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), who, with his brother George (Jesse Plemons) is part of a well-to-do family with a cattle ranch in 1925 Montana. Both brothers—"Romulus and Remus" Phil calls them—are college educated with George knowing the law and Phil the classics of English literature. But, the two couldn't be more different, from each other and their educations. Phil is rough in speech and manner and does most of the work around the ranch, while George is sensitive and does the paper-work. Where Phil is coarse and brutal, George is quiet and empathetic.

They've been working the ranch for a long time, with George leavening the coarseness and conflicts the acerbic Phil causes in whatever he does. At the end of their cattle drive, the crew stops into an inn run by Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) for drinks and chow. They're served by Rose's son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slight, effeminate, and shy. Peter becomes an easy target for Phil's malice, making fun of everything the boy does, including using the artistic center-pieces that Peter has meticulously created to light his cigarette. Rose breaks down over this and George tries to apologize, since Phil wouldn't think of it, nor would he were it suggested to him.

But, this starts a series of events that drives a wedge between Phil and George, starting with the gentler brother marrying the Gordon woman—Phil considers her (as he says to her face) "a cheap schemer" only after the family money, and once she sells the inn and moves to the Burbank ranch-house, he begins a campaign of intimidation and hostility towards her that drives her to drink—a habit that she had previously disdained. George has paid for Peter to go away to college, but when he comes back, he finds his mother a wreck, and an open hostility against him from the cowboys working the ranch.

Campion breaks with Ford in the portrayal of women as revered stabilizers in the wilds of the West—Rose doesn't have the strength to take command and be the influence that Ford's women are in the isolation of the prairie—and Phil's cunning brute is too entrenched in his "man's world" view to allow any sort of control out of his grasp. The presence of a woman is just too intrusive to his staked-out territory.

But it's more complicated than that. And to say anything more would be to take away some complexities and motivations that might spoil the bumps and shocks that the movie has in store and could ruin its journey for audiences. Let's just say this: Campion has made a Western in locale (and borrowed some tropes from the genre), but she has other influences as well, taken from psychological thrillers and even thrown a shade of Hitchcock, making The Power of the Dog a definite hyphenate. It starts out as one thing—which may make some reconsider if they want to watch something that dark—and eventually changes into something else—something much darker.

But, one cannot parse just how beautiful The Power of the Dog is. Campion, working with cinematographer Ari Wegner, has created images of vistas and landscapes that at times take the breath away, sometimes mimicking iconic shots from previous Westerns, at times taking their cue (as in the shot above) from the paintings of Frederic Remington—as previous directors had done. Sometimes you just want to hold on an image before it inevitably movies on, wondering at how it managed to be lit by a single match, or how it captures the troubling disquiet of twilight.

It's a good watch, that will inspire questions and cast a refraction on past examples of the Western—whether the winning of the West wasn't as much a loss, and whether in bringing European culture to the frontier, we didn't drag along something horrible in the process, something that only seemed tame, in our taming of the frontier.

ParaNorman

Written at the time of film's release...

Re-Animators
or
"I See Dead Puppets"

The town of Blithe Hollow depends on the supernatural for its tourist trade. But, what the city fathers probably don't understand is that if you live by the sword...well, let's just say you'd better have a good cleaning crew.

One of the town's citizens is young Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smith-McPhee) and he has a problem—he sees dead people, all of them. He's ostracized from friends, family and reality...from life, really...as most of his acquaintances are non-corporeal and that leads to bullying, loneliness and a general lack of enthusiasm. He'd be better off dead—as the only people he can relate to already are.

Then, there's his creepy Uncle (a wonderfully comic vocal performance by John Goodman) who tasks him with a special duty—saving Blithe Hollow from destruction by the wrath of the very witch of the town's fame, killed by the city elders centuries before.  To do so, he must go on a hero's journey with unlikely allies, many roadblocks both physical and emotional, while evading zombies, the undead, jocks, bullies and narcissistic big sisters to confront the evil witch.

ParaNorman is hilarious, quirky certainly, but also has a lot of depth and breadth to it.  It would be an easy—too easy—temptation to call it a Tim Burton knock-off (stop-motion animation, horrorific subject matter...it must be a Tim Burton knock-off), but it's actually far more concerned with story over effect than Burton, whose work can become tangentially derailed for a sequence or bit that the director finds funny, even if its a mismatch for the rest of the film and its non-sensibilities. ParaNorman stays on track, managing to brings its humor out of character, rather than despite it, and with a sense of comic timing that's by turns subtle, surprising and goofy. Yes, there are scary bits—it's rated PG, so maybe the littlest of kids shouldn't go—but its horrors are not there to shock, but to thrill. 

And when the film does build up a full head of horror steam at the end, it provides some of the most awesome sights and effects that have been seen in animation in quite some time. A hybrid of the Burton and Aardmann animation studios—directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell worked for both groups, respectively, and you can see aspects of their animation styles meshing, hallmarking the best of both stop-motion worlds—Burton's "antic-ness" and Aardmann's appreciation (and mining the comedic possibilities) of stillness.  Combine that with the story of an outsider who manages to collect a posse of co-adventurers who handle the auxiliary parts of the hero's main mission, and you have a well-rounded story that manages to surpass the limitations of the parts (making it, amusingly, a bit of a zombie-movie itself).  

What's nice is there's enough time in the plot (involving more than just the cemetery variety) to appreciate the artistry behind it—the way the town is laid out with abandoned squalor in the detail, the people with perpetually bemused expressions, and are, like us, anything but symmetrical, the way an ear glows with the back-lighting of sunshine, and in the ending that manages to combine moments of dark beauty and true psychotic scariness. Lots to appreciate. Lots to like. It's a fine film that makes the most of its slim ambitions, and rises above them.

Dark PhoeniX

Jean Therapy
or
Screwing up "The Dark Phoenix Saga", Part DeuX

"The Dark Phoenix Saga" (done in two parts—"The Uncanny X-Men" Issues 101-108 and "The Uncanny X-Men" Issues 129-138) is considered to be THE great story of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne run of the "X-Men" comics, when the series was at its apex, not only in terms of sales but also creativity. It seems inevitable that if you're going to do something with "The X-Men" (in whatever media), you're going to get around to do a version of that particular story, so dominant is it in the canon. How could one resist? It's simple, it's tragic, and it involves that gut-buster of the comics field—killing off a principal character, in this case, the character of Jean Grey, considered the heart and soul of the X-men (as well as the love of the group's leader, Scott Summers, aka Cyclops).*

Well, (as they say in Monty Python) she "got better."

But, the run was controversial and revered. Just that—point of fact—despite its high regard in fan circles, the story is not that great. Claremont was playing with issues of god-like powers and how such abilities can corrupt the weak**—not a big revelation there (although, truth to tell, i get the sneaking suspicion that not many voters are familiar with it). What made the story interesting came from editorial interference. At one point ("The Uncanny X-Men #135), Grey, in deep space in her Phoenix state, decides to recharge her depleted powers by snuffing out a distant sun, thus wiping out billions of beings—the D'bari (remember it, it'll show up later)—in another solar system. She suffered no consequences. Claremont seemed okay with that. But, then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter found the idea abhorrent—comparing it to Hitler going unpunished for the Holocaust. It was Shooter's insistence that Jean Grey die, which was dramatized as an act of self-sacrifice. It terminally limited what Claremont could do with such a conflicted character (you gotta keep your creative options open), but it allowed for some rough justice and a kind of penance, balancing the moral scales just a smidge'. But, it tinkered with the mythological (which, really, all superhero stories do, to a point) in an extremely obvious and melodramatic fashion. Fan-boys love that stuff.

The first X-Men movie series—the one with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine—rushed into the story, making it cross between X-Men 2: X-Men United and X-Men 3: The Last Stand. But, it did so in a clumsy and quite heretical way; in The Last Stand, Grey's Phoenix (played by Famke Janssen) atomizes her lover Scott Summers—aka Cyclops (James Marsden)—in one of her first acts, giving one of the comic's major characters extremely short-shrift,*** then compounding it by having her disintegrate Professor X (Patrick Stewart) as well. This allowed series star Jackman to be the one X-Person who could defeat her (as he had regenerative healing powers, which was fine as long as she disintegrated him REAL SLOW—if she just "blowed him up real good" that would have been less of a conceit, and one HELL of a writer's conundrum to solve). But, then, The Last Stand chose the easy way out in all matters. It was a huge letdown for both fans of the comic and the film series and the response was quite vocal. Also—as The Last Stand was extraordinarily expensive for its time (even by super-budget standards) it was deemed a financial failure, as well as artistic failure to the point where Singer's "return" X-Men movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past "x'd" it out of existence.

I wish I could say that Dark Phoenix does a better job of it with the "First Class" X-Men, but it does not, although its path is not as radical. There were issues during filming—most of the cast and crew admit that the third act, involving an elaborate trains sequence, replaced an earlier more cosmic resolution (supposedly because preview audiences found it too similar to Captain Marvel's ending, although this is a guess as Marvel is being mum about it). Who knows if it would have been better? But, it doesn't solve the main problem—timing.

The character of Jean Grey (as portrayed by Sophie Turner, who does great work with what she can) was introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse and she had barely enough screen-time for the character to generate any emotional stakes with the audience. This film tries—putting a young Jean Grey into a life-shattering traumatic event (interestingly, the same one as turned Dr. Sivana to the "Dark Side" in Shazam! (I guess Marvel doesn't watch too many DCU movies—they should, if only to see what not to do).

Cut to the efforts of Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) to take on guardianship—and care-taking—of the young Jean at the Xavier School for Gifted Children, where he provides a mental block band-aid to keep Jean from going down a dark path. Unfortunately, he's the one who induces the event that pushes her over the edge. At the notification of the President—the government trusts the X-Men now?—the core team—Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean are sent to space ("raise your hands if...") to rescue the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour from a virulent energy source (fulfilling the classic Marvel trope—"I dunno what it is, but it sure is big"). Nightcrawler *BAMFS* over to rescue the crew, but manages to leave Jean on the shuttle where her efforts to keep the vehicle together exposes her to the energy's attack, which she absorbs. It dramatically increases her psycho-kinesis, but puts the emphasis on the "psycho" part by breaking the mental block Prof. X had established.

Pretty soon, she's having to deal with the awesome powers she possesses, the inhibitions it dispels and the fact that she enjoys it to a destructive degree. There is a lot of room to snark that the plot is a cautionary tale about giving a woman to much power, which is quite the opposite of the line Marvel should take especially given its Captain Marvel film and the too-brief tip of the cowl to super-women in Avengers: Endgame.

The results are damaging to the X-Men—one prominent A-lister is killed—and it results in all the mutants taking sides—Xavier's group on one side trying to get Jean back to school to try to mute her instincts, and the group headed by Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Beast to try to eliminate her. Both groups are challenged by the shape-shifting D'bari (ah, reader, you made it this far!) led by the power-hungry Vuk (Jessica Chastain, who shoves portraying intelligence aside for a serene lizardish entitlement), who have been tracking the Phoenix Energy and want to suck it out of Jean for themselves...

Attack in New York. Attack on the mutant-train (which is quite dynamic and well-realized, actually). But, again, we've spent more time with Evil Jean than with the sympathetic one. The consequences of the actions don't resonate and seem less than a tragedy than a sensible outcome to avert disaster. Timing. 

Another X-Men movie with Turner's Grey might have helped, but 20th Century Fox (which has the movie rights to the characters) wanted to wrap up this version of X-men (2.0?) so that it could be "re-imagined" under the auspices of their new Masters, Disney-Marvel. And so the potential for a good film is once again sacrificed for corporate interests. As they used to say on "The Bullwinkle Show," "That trick never works."

You can bet they'll try it again for a third time (unless the "re-boot" tanks) because it's not like there are a lot of other X-Men stories to tell. How many times have we seen Krypton explode and Bruce Wayne's parents get shot? Maybe "re-boot" and "re-imagining" shouldn't be the terms used but "recycling," instead. Send the old stuff to the burn-bin and start anew?

Seems appropriate. Phoenix's may rise. But, first there have to be a lot of ashes.

* No one dies in comics. Not really. And especially in the Marvel Universe ("The House of Ideas"). In 1986, writer Kurt Busiek and Bob Layton revived the character as part of their team in "X-Factor" with the first issue.

** File under: "Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely." You can file it, but it'll probably take you a year to find it again, because a lot of people do that one. I find it...thought-provoking that the director so dominant in bringing most of the X-Men movies to the screen, director Bryan Singer—who could learn a thing or two about the abuse of power—did not direct the two "Phoenix" films.

*** Lord knows why, probably to shock the expectations of those familiar with the original, in much the same way that Stanley Kubrick in The Shining had Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrence kill the guy who, in Stephen King's book, ultimately saves the Torrence family, giving more power to the wife and son to triumph and save themselves, but also to shock the hell out of the complacent fans. Worked great. With Cyclops, not so much, although one could make an argument that she had to kill her former lover to "detach" herself from her Jean Grey past. Pfft.

Rockin' roller-blades, it's Dazzler! (Marvel's dumbest superhero)