Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert 

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

 Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Star: Elvis Presley

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

 

Elvis is back in the building.

Leave it to the king of movie extravagance, Baz “Moulin Rouge” Luhrmann, to resurrect 57-year-old footage of the King of Rock and Roll and create an experience that captures, with every nailed high note, every random karate kick, every bead of sweat, every curled upper lip, the essence of how Elvis Presley single-handedly reversed the course of popular music.

You’d think Luhrmann would‘ve walked away from Elvis after examining the singer in his triumphant 2022 biopic, Elvis. But in the process of making that film, Luhrmann unearthed warehouses of footage shot for two contemporary documentaries: Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970), featuring Elvis’s then-revolutionary Las Vegas residency, and Elvis on Tour (1972), an account of the star’s summer tour of several U.S. cities.

Both films included candid rehearsal footage — although it’s clear that, even in practice mode, Elvis is always keenly aware of the rolling cameras, clowning like a juvenile and improvising fake lyrics to songs he’s been performing for more than a decade.

Piecing together those disparate elements while compiling lovingly restored footage from the 1950s and early ’60s, Luhrmann leaves no doubt as to why, as the jacket of Elvis’s greatest hits album famously boasted, “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.”

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is being initially released in IMAX theaters, and there are all sorts of good reasons to see the film on the largest screen possible. That’s the Way It Is, in particular, was spectacularly shot by cinematographer Lucien Ballard, known for classic action flicks like The Wild Bunch and True Grit. Utilizing eight Panavision film cameras with anamorphic lenses, Ballard brought cinematic urgency to his documentation of both Elvis’s rehearsals and live performances, and Luhrmann mines that celluloid gold for all it’s worth. On the large screen, the rivulets of sweat pouring down Elvis’s chiseled cheekbones seem to nourish his endurance, rather than sap it.

For once, we’re not subjected to maudlin images of Elvis in decline. Aside from some 1972 footage in which exhaustion and weight issues are undeniably beginning to take their toll, Elvis is here, for the most part, in excellent physical shape — and nearly always in astonishing vocal form. (His confessed boyhood infatuation with Mario Lanza is embodied in his soaring rendition of “How Great Thou Art.”) He’s also an alarmingly physical presence, stalking the stage like a caged cougar, acting as de facto music director conducting the large band and chorus, lunging into splits and kicks. (Also resisting mightily when, as he shakes hands with fans in the front row, a woman tries to snatch one of his trademark rings. “They don’t come off,” Elvis protests. “They don’t come off!”)

There’s conventional wisdom that Elvis Presley was dethroned by the British Invasion, particularly The Beatles. But here he is crooning “Something” and rocking out to “Get Back,” having both predated the Lads from Liverpool and survived beyond their breakup, arguably as popular as he’s ever been.

Subsequent generations have developed suspicious minds regarding Elvis Presley as either a grainy hip swiveler on The Ed Sullivan Show or a pitiful, washed-up Buddha-like self-caricature. After seeing EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, they may well find they can’t help falling in love.