Baz Luhrmann agrees with the critics! As good as Austin Butler was in Luhrmann’s Elvis, the movie is a bloated mess, unsure what to do when Elvis is offstage. The director’s response: just remove the “other stuff” like Priscilla and Tom Hanks in a fat suit. EPiC is what Elvis should have been: the celebration of one of the most electric entertainers in US History.
The focus of Elvis Presley in Concert (EPiC) is his after his movie career, and the start of that Las Vegas residency at the International Hotel. Luhrmann uses footage across several shows and preparation sessions with the King and his royal court (eg the band) as they get ready to do two shows a day for multiple years, something like 1,100 shows total. Other than calling Colonel Tom Parker the Devil in Disguise through song, we get nothing else: just clips of Elvis prepping for, going to, performing in, and leaving many Vegas shows, through a melody of some of his greatest songs (original or reimagined), and yes, those sweaty gyrating hips.
I was too young to experience Elvis live, but I had heard of several people, mostly women, who had seen him multiple times. And even amongst the greatest performers ever like the Beatles, James Brown, or whomever, Elvis was always mentioned right there among them, and I never understood why, for two hours of hip gyration. EPiC changes all that. From conception to completion, Baz Lurhmann shows us the master director Elvis was of putting on a great show. I knew he could dance and sing, but from this I saw how well he envisioned the big picture of a live performance. Luhrmann walks us through Elvis’s song catalog to show us how songs we all know evolve from studio to screen. We see Elvis work through with the band when to slow a song down so he can talk to the crowd a little, work on hand gestures to transition the song to speed up again, and then go back to performing. Hunka Hunka Burning Love for example, Luhrmann shows us how the song has to get so soft that all they hear is Elvis and his back up singer doing call and response only, then showing how awesome that is onscreen to witness; Elvis then talks and preps the crowd for the inevitable build back up, which each instrument gets reintroduced, one by one, until Vegas is in full on bedlam, and the ladies want a hunka hunka Elvis right there and then. All those confusing thoughts I had about Elvis’s popularity faded away as we see Elvis do this with all types of songs of his: gospel, R&B, country, etc, understanding why he was the perfect culmination of American music.
And how intoxicating that must have been. I’m so happy to see that Baz Luhrmann’s favorite scene from his 2022 movie was this one, capturing the, um, awakening many of Elvis’s fans would have at his shows. Half the fun of EPiC is the shots into the audience, at the wave of women just ready and willing to throw themselves at him just to make those thoughts and feelings very, very real. At one point he kisses one fan in the front row, and she clearly leaves her body, overcome by the power Elvis’s lips have given to her. The movie at times makes those Vegas concerts a fever dream for both artist and fan, as Elvis also gets run out of the building, because the ladies there want to swallow him whole. Underneath it all is pure elation, which can be felt every single minute of the doc; I’m heterosexual, but even I was getting a little verklempt at the gaping v-neck swexyness present for 2.5 hours at the International Vegas Hotel at 5 and 9 PM, I’m guesisng.
That’s how you conduct a do over. Baz Luhrmann, your live action movie wasn’t good. But that’s ok, cause at least you gave the ladies and gay men new hunka hunka Austin Butler to fawn over. Plus, you stripped down your giant epic movie into a 100 minute concert to remember, sending everyone home smiling and satisfied. Especially the 65 year old ladies behind me, beside themselves they got that close to the King one last time.