Elvis earned a fifteen-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival.   Directed by Baz Luhrman, Elvis (Austin Butler) is about the murder of The King of Rock n’Roll’s spirit and soul by his manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) an addict.  Parker’s addiction to gambling fueled by his debts resulted in his hooking Elvis Presley to pills.  Parker needed Elvis to perform a grueling five-year contract in Las Vegas to pay for his debts. Elvis was physically destroyed by this cruel schedule due to Parker’s greed.   This tortuous performance schedule ended in Elvis’s death due to his addiction to pills that he felt he needed to take to perform resulting in an overdose. He died at age 42.

When Presley’s mother (HelenThomson) died of alcoholism, his father asked Colonel Tom Parker to step into the role of comforting guidance that Elvis’s mother filled.  In turn, Elvis’s manager Colonel Parker, who was not a colonel, not even a Parker, his name and identity had been manufactured, appointed Elvis’s father (Rufus Sewell) as the financial manager of Elvis’s career.  Parker had been a carnival barker. Manipulation was his true vocation.  He used to paint sparrows yellow and sell them as canaries and sell dancing chickens after he had forced them to dance on a hot plate.

 Parker as Elvis’s manager took 50% of his earnings and hooked Elvis so that Elvis came under his total control.  Elvis’s entourage called Parker the “Snowman”.  Elvis knew Parker was manipulating him, but he could not break away from him, though he repeatedly tried.

Each attempt Elvis made to free himself from the shackles of Tom Parker, Parker would come up with a new money-making scheme, but Parker always presented this new scheme as though it was in Elvis’s best interests.

For me, the movie Elvis begins when Elvis first sings. All of the audience was waiting on the edge of their seats for this moment and it was paydirt.   “You ain’t nothing but a Hound  Dog,”  Austin Butler belted as the audience cheered.

Austin Butler sang all of Elvis’s songs though, towards the end, Butler’s and Presley’s voices were blended.  Austin Butler will be a star because of his performance in Elvis.   From unknown to superstar.

Addiction aside, one of the main plot lines is the influence  black music of the fifties, especially Little Richard, had on Elvis. This was the height of racism. Elvis adopted the gyrations and pelvic moves from the blacks whom he worshiped. When Martin Luther King died, he was devastated, but rocked on. Colonel Parker wanted Elvis to stop his sexual physical moves as the police and political hierarchy wanted to jail Elvis if he continued to be so sexual.  Women took off their panties and threw them on stage.   A defiant Elvis would put these panties on his head and sing on while the police scowled.   

A young Elvis is shown singing gospel in black churches and being baptized.  His love of blacks helped heal racism in America that was ugly.  

I remember going to all-black gatherings outside of Atlantic City in the early 5o’s just to hear the Negroes sing.  These gatherings were near the swamplands of Ocean City, New Jersey.

Don’t miss this film. While addiction is the drum beat throughout the film, the singing, the editing, the acting, the make-up, the dialogue, and the split-screen images all make for a standing ovation.  Hanks's acting improves as does this movie’s spirit as it sprints along while the plot thickens and racism stirs the pot and almost kills Elvis as much as addiction.  See it. Enjoy. And listen a la Dolby sound to great music filling your ears while a top-rate cast and script burn into your hearts.