Think back to the biggest concert you ever saw -it could be Springsteen or U2 or The Stones, or Lady Gaga or Ramones, or Taylor Swift or Radiohead, or (in my case) two concerts from the 80s (Prince and X) and one from the 2000s (Madonna on her confection). Now think back to the greatest moment in That concert, the one who gave you chills you can still feel. It is the kind of experience that I predict that you will look at “Epic: Elvis Presley in concert“An extraordinary new documentary directed by Baz Luhrmannhead of “Elvis.”
The film is a revelation, because for 96 minutes it just shows you how intoxicating Elvis Presley was when he began to perform live in Las Vegas in 1969 and the beginning of the 70s. Many people don’t really think about him that way. There is still a mythology that hangs over Elvis during this period-vega’s glitter, the white suit with the half-unanimous cape, the gigantic finger rings and car grill sunglasses, “Thus, Zarathustra”-Frome “2001” Bombastic Intros, the sweat that pours his Shag-Markets, spoke. Everything can add a vision of the king of rock ‘n’ roll as chairman of a kingdom of kitsch.
But there is the myth and there is reality, which has always been incredible, and there are reasons why the perception of that reality has developed over time. I can hardly exaggerate to what extent in the 70s the simple fact that Elvis appeared in Las Vegas was considered unthinkable cheese -like; It wasn’t what rock artists did. His clothes seemed to be a parody of the Grandiloquent model camp, and the fact that he would sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” right along with “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cuel” made him seem like any Cornball Americana Nostalgia Act.
So what has changed? At the age of Vegas -housing (not just Gaga but grateful Dead!) See Elvis’s Las Vegas plays now astonishing before his time. The taint of everything has melted away. (Vegas is no longer the place where vulgar “Middle Americans” go; it’s the place where everyone including hipsters go.) And in the age of fashion as postmodern excess, where stars are now now expensive exhibitionists, elvisa intent Spangled Peacock Gaudiness, No Longer Look Like Something Anyone would even think of ridiculing; They have Glam Audacity of True … Rock ‘n’ roll. (It is Jimmy Page, in his comfortable sweaters, which now seem dated.) Elvis, in the early 70s, was still relatively lean and meaningful and still glowing to watch. He was in his royal mid -thirties, with the sexy pits and one of the biggest hair heads in rock history. And that voice! His Tremolo Vibrato noted each note to a pearl pearl.
Seven years ago, when “Bohemian Rhapsody” came out, I went back and looked at a lot of pictures of queen at a concert, because I wanted to get into Freddie Mercury, which is now universally thought of as one of the most electrifying artists in rock history. He deserves that reputation. But I am here to testify that he is about a third as electrifying as Elvis was in the early 70’s. The power of Elvis’s voice remained unabated – the step, the suffocated, it caressed, it ran, the rocked, it hit each note with a single beauty. And although he would sometimes flirt with comedy in his features and not jiggla as he did in 1956, how he held and moved his body still had a flamboyant erotic eloquence.
Luhrmann originally planned to integrate never before seen pictures from this period in “Elvis” and decided against it. But what he discovered, at that time, was 68 drawers with 35 mm and 8 mm pictures in Warner Bros. -The archives, including large withdrawals from “Elvis: That’s the way it is” (1970) and “Elvis on Tour” (1972), the two major Elvis concert films, plus Audiotapes of Unhard interviews. Much of the pictures were silent (although there were corresponding sound), and everything needed to be synchronized painfully, a process that took two years. Luhrmann, who dives into this treasure chest of invisible performances, works with editor Jonathan Redmond, has created a streamlined and exquisite concert film. Narrated by Elvis (From the Interview Clips), It Incorporates Rehearsal Footage From When He Was Getting Ready to Play Vegas For The Very First Time at the International Hotel (Offstage, We See What A Perfectionist Elvis) and also Hangae Hang-Outl InterPolates numsous performances from his vegas residency, almost all of them from the early ’70s.
Elvis appeared more than 1,100 exhibitions from 1969 to 1977, and at a certain time, when the drugs and the overeating took his toll, he began to slip into a parody of himself. But not during the first years. And when we look at that vintage period now, we feel the life force of the accusation of what Elvis still had, which is much linked to what he had in 1956, but also different. When you see pictures of Elvis in the 50s, from “Ed Sullivan” or anywhere (“Epic” contains any never seen pictures of his legendary “Gold Lamé concert” from Hawaii 1957), you see two things at once: an astonishing large practitioner, but also a man who with each hip shake. It is not an exaggeration, and it is baked into the original Elvis experience.
The ultimate incorrect cliché is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s statement that “there are no other actions in American life.” (He really talked about himself.) Elvis Presley had one of the biggest other actions in history, and it began in 1968, when he had his legendary network TV comeback special. Lurhmann opens “Epic” with a long and dazzling edited summary of Elvis’s career, especially the films, which were indefensible but in a certain way underestimated. (The Where Kitsch, but even the worst of them were very looking kitsch.) But there is no doubt that Elvis had faded like a musical force. From the end of the 60s he returned with revenge, and what told us is that the importance of his style and the importance of his presence had changed. He was no longer a rebel; You can’t be one after you change the whole world to something created in your image. But what it meant, because we no longer joined the volcanic revolutionary side of his sexual swagger, is that we now experienced him clean as … a pop and rock musician.
The film is heated with the rehearsal films, where we see him, in a dazzling colorful super psychelic shirt, make haunting reproduction of Beatles “yesterday” and “something” and also Dusty Springfield’s “You don’t have to say you love me.” We hear Elvis talk about how he protects all kinds of music – how he as a teenager would listen to Mario Lanza and Metropolitan Opera. The “soft” side of Elvis has always been great. But shortly after that he sings on stage “It’s okay”, and the reason it doesn’t feel like nostalgia is that the song’s speed is ramping – it now sounds like a cult train. Elvis is supported by a group of musicians, known as the TCB band (to take care of business), which completely kicked. James Burton’s guitar solo is blowing, and when Elvis stands on stage and plays air guitar with them, it is a excitement, as it is less grainy than loosely choreographed abandonment.
Elvis and the band make a “dog dog” which is so fast that it is punk. He sings “Polk Salad Annie” (“Her mother worked at the chain gang …”) with a dirty speed that is worthy of Tina Turner, and in a very cool hybrid he segrates back and forth between “Little Sister” and “Get Back.” And in a sequence guaranteed to give you these chills, we see him perform “Burning Love”, one of his two biggest songs from that era, for the first time (he still reads the lyrics from a sheet of paper), and it almost burns down the house.
Elvis also a lot around: He folds the microphone, he mocks the lyrics, he sings with a bra on his head (he threw many of them), and Luhrmann, picks up on this spirit, offers his own piece of mockery by following Elvis -performance of “You are the devil in dissatisfaction” with a mound Tom Parker, which we also hit in Elvis show of “You are the devil in Disguise” with a montage by Col. The crowd of loving women. Did Parker deserve the bad rap that Lurhmann gave him in “Elvis”? Peter Guralnick’s new book claims something else, but I think Guralnick lacks the forest for the trees. Elvis, as he himself explains in the documentary, is passionate about his desire to act in other countries (which he never once had to do), and if That thing Had allowed to happen, I think the whole track in his life may have been different.
“Epic” Klimax with a sour-sublime version of “Suspicitable senses”, an indescribably good song that can almost be the battle salt in a republic that had reached a divorce of 50 percent. And when the movie is over, you want to applaud Showmanship: Elvis’s and also Baz Luhrmann’s. He wores Elvis too much to let some excessive flash get in the way. There is a purity and natural -born glare to “epic.” What you see is what you get: Elvis in the raw, driven by the awareness that it will not be better than that.
