Elvis (film review) & Sandman Episode 11
Aug. 21st, 2022 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Elvis directed and written by Baz Luhrmann (an Australian Director) starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.
This was the film that Tom Hanks was making in Australia when he caught COVID, I think. It is entirely filmed in Australia and Queensland, Australia (doubling for Vegas).
I was pleasantly surprised by it. I don't tend to like bio-pics. But this is by far the best bio-pic that I've seen, possibly next to Rocket Man and Walk the Line.
Mainly because it's not told like a straight bio-pic, and has a central focus. The problem with most bio-pic's - is they decide to give you some sort of shortened summarized history of a singer's or actor's or politician's life - and often focus on things like their addiction, their marriages, their kids,ie. personal life, but not on what they did for a living, which is the whole reason there is a bio-pic to begin with and really the only thing the biographer can tell with any authority or knowledge whatsoever. You can't tell what someone does in their personal life and you can't really judge it. Everyone remembers it differently. It gets embellished. Exaggerated. People make stuff up to make it more interesting - because let's face it people's personal lives are rather boring. ["I got up, I made food, I read the paper, I drank coffee, I played with kids, I had sex with my wife, I played music, I watched sports, I went to bed..." Or ..."I got up, I ate at restaurant, I went to work, I came home, went to gym, watched tv, ate dinner, watched tv, called someone, went to bed..." With all sorts of variations. Bored now.]
So there's two ways of approaching it...
1. Give people the dirt - or the soap opera. (Most famous people have a lot of soap opera, because how can you not? Fame is kind of toxic in of itself.)
Or
2. Focus on what they did, how they became famous, and what killed them.
Lurhmann wisely (in my opinion) chooses the latter. Wisely - because everyone else has already done the former. Kurt Russel played Elvis in a 1979 movie shortly after Elvis' death which dug deep into the former, as did numerous others. There's been a mini-series in there somewhere. Elvis has been picked apart, judged, scrutinized, and ruminated over since he died, if not before.
Here, Elvis isn't the person being scrutinized, but rather his manager, Colonel Parker is - and it becomes relatively apparent somewhere in the middle of the film - that no one has a clue who Parker really is.
Parker was a gambler and a con-man - who ran a carnival act. It had two low-tier family favorite country singers on tour, neither memorable in their own right. One day, people on his little tour are playing the radio - and across the air-waves comes Elvis' song "That's Alright Mama" which was released in 1954. People are loving it. Parker assumes it's a Black man singing it (actually the word he uses is "Negro"), and is astonished it's a white man, and his face lights up with an idea.
The film is for the most part told through Parker's perspective (although he comes across, as played by Hanks, as a big of a slug or leech or vampire, old, ugly as sin, overweight, sluggish, and with a heavily accented voice). And Parker is constantly justifying his actions towards Elvis, and deflecting the blame onto the audience who loved him. Or rather Elvis' addiction to that "love" and "applause".
Early on, a couple things are clear - Parker sees Elvis as a cash cow, and in Elvis, he has the human equivalent of lightening in a bottle. Elvis is the solution to all of Parker's ills - if he can just control him. Which he spends most of the movie attempting to do with mixed results.
Like all of Baz Luhrmann films - there is an underlying social commentary, also the focus is often on spectacle. Or how the art takes over, and almost becomes addictive in its own right. Racism is a character in the film - it's a notable theme, that is addressed sometimes outright, and sometimes subtly in the background.
The people who want to shut down Elvis - are racist bigots. With the Confederate Flag hanging behind them in stark relief, because Elvis dances and moves to music like a Black Man would, too lewd and crass for the white male power elite - who are shown in gray suits, with white creased back hair, short to the scalp, and wire rimmed glasses - sallow cheeks, and old.
Their skin is pale and white. Their clothing gray. They are shadow figures that lurk in the corners and come out to threaten, whenever Elvis steps out of line.
Elvis' friendship with BB King and various Black musicians is shown, but at the same time - it's clear that it is on the fringe, not front and center.
Parker attempts to stop it, but can't quite manage it.
The story is told in some respects like a musical - not a musical in the sense of Rocket Man, more like Walk the Line, with a lot more music intertwined within it. And once again, wisely, they manage to remaster the songs in such a way that it's not clear most of the time whether Butler or the real Elvis is actually singing the song. And in some cases, neither are at all - and the cover is being sung by someone else - showing how the meaning of the song changes depending on who sings it - as well as showing where Elvis' inspiration for singing it came from.
Elvis didn't listen or get inspiration from white musicians, he got it from Black musicians. And he didn't care. Hound Dog and That's Alright Mama are two songs that take center stage, sung by more than one person, along with Suspicious Minds. The other's fall a bit more into the background, although they are sung as well.
His film career is mentioned, but more as a passing highlight, as is his service and his courtship/engagement/marriage with Priscilla. Who in this version is barely noticeable next to him. Also they managed to cast someone who is the spitting image of the real Priscilla Pressely. In reality, she did disappear next to him - all you really saw was Elvis. [They've interviewed various celebrities who met them, including the Beatles, and all stated that while they know they met Priscilla, that they know she is a beautiful woman, that Elvis had introduced her, she was standing right next to Elvis, they don't really remember her, and barely saw her - at the time. All they saw was Elvis.]
Austin Butler, hands down, nails Elvis. I had watched a documentary film that aired in 1970, put together by Elvis and Col. Parker the previous weekend - show his Vegas show and recording sessions - and Butler had everything pitch perfect. His voice. His mannerisms. His charisma. His dance moves. His way of handling music. Everything. I honestly couldn't tell it wasn't Elvis at one point. He's that good. And I kind of fell in love with him a bit - which I can't say I ever did with the real deal. [I was only ten years of age when Elvis died, at the age of 42 in 1977.]
The film takes Elvis' life from his meeting with Parker (although Parker does talk about what happened before that point) up until his death. The story is told in flashbacks via Parker's eyes, as Parker wanders about Vegas, tied up to an IV, old and sunken in, and decrepit. No friends, family or hangers on to speak of. And it ends with Elvis' death, and Parker stating - "you may think I killed him, but it wasn't me - it was you, it was his love affair with all of you..." An interesting commentary that is a through line for some of Baz Luhrmann - where the audience is somehow complicit, just for arriving, paying for, watching and taking part in the spectacle.
And the final reel that plays over Parker's voice, sometimes blurring it out altogether - of the real Elvis, not Butler's version, playing one last time to a Vegas audience, and then his funeral, and the massive out-pouring of grief by the public...gets across that it's unclear whether Parker is right about that. Elvis could barely stand during his last performance. His performances in Vegas under hot lights, had over 50 songs, and he often collapsed afterwards from exhaustion. A tour most likely would have been less exhausting - since he'd have had less shows, and would have been forced to limit the number of songs he did, due to the limitations of venue. But Parker knew how to manipulate him, and how to seduce him - he knew where Elvis's weaknesses lied, and how to play on those weaknesses.
Parker introduced Elvis to the drugs that kept him on the stage, even when he was exhausted, and the drugs that helped him sleep. And at one point, he has a doctor inject him with adrenaline to keep him on stage.
Parker does not come out well in this movie. And it's oddly satisfying to learn that the Elvis Estate was able to split ties with him completely after Elvis' death. In a settlement agreement, Parker's ties with the estate were severed completely, and he could no longer get any interest, royalties or payment - Elvis could no longer make money for Parker.
Elvis himself does - for the most part. Since Lurhmann doesn't delve at all into Elvis' personal life, and steers away from some of the more controversial elements of that life. Instead focusing on what made Elvis so appealing to people, and how the very thing that made him successful aided in his destruction, and enabled him to be tempted by Parker and even pursued by him.
Hanks does a good job with Parker, but unlike Butler, never quite disappears into the role - I'm always aware on some level it is Hanks. No, the show is more or less Butler's and it is Butler who sells it and makes it work. And for a bio-pic about Elvis - that's how it should be.
2. The Sandman - Episode 11 : A Dream of A Thousand Cats, and Calliope
This episode contains as separately contained stories in their own rights two of The Sandman comics series "stand-a-alone" issues or "short tales", where Dream is a supporting player, not the focus or lead. [Actually this is true of most of Gaiman's works - his heroes are often not the focus of the story, but a means of meeting and telling the stories of other characters or in some regards a catalyst for them.] By separately contained - I mean they are told as two separate stories, the only connection between them is Dream.
"Sandman" is a notable series in that it was among the first truly literary stories to enter the comic book medium. The English Literature Canon is notoriously snooty and classicist. It frowns on other genres and deems them unworthy. Sandman kind of laughed at that - and pushed open that door a bit. It blended genres and commented on literary canon with a touch of sarcastic glee.
A Dream of a Thousand Cats
I was pleasantly surprised by this adaptation. The animation is quite good, and the cats really do look like cats. The vocal talents worked in some respects better than the audio - I preferred Sandra Oh to Bebe Neuwirth.
The story is kind of slyly humorous - about how Cats used to rule the earth and hunt humans, and enslave them. But humans out dreamed them, and dreamed the world as a place that they ruled, and cats were domesticated animals. The trick is for a thousand cats to dream again that they are the rules, and playing with the humans.
In short, your cat is secretly plotting to kill you.
Calliope
This also surprised me. I did not like the audio version and don't remember if I ever read the comic version.
The story is about a writer who tricks a muse into servicing his needs, until she basically refuses to help any longer, and he gives her to another writer. Calliope is the daughter of Zeus, and a thousand year old muse, who a writer, Eramus, has found a way to trap under the laws. She is basically his hostage until he frees her, instead he gifts her to another "frustrated" writer.
Arthur Darvill plays Mardoc, the "Frustrated" writer, while Derek Jacobi is the one who gifts the muse to him. Melissanthi Mahut plays the muse.
The television adaptation resolved some of the issues I'd had with it - To get inspired, the writer rapes the muse, who refuses to inspire him. In the television adaptation, unlike the comic and audiobook, the rape isn't shown, and barely suggested, in fact blink - and you won't know it happened it at all - I'm still not quite sure if it did. It's implied with knock on the door, a gasp, click on the keyboard, and blood on the face. And done after he gets more and more and more desperate. It's not shown for "gritty realism", how he got inspiration from the Muse - without her consent. The original - I had issues with - and the audio version sticks to the original, this version veers away, so the focus isn't on the muse's victimhood but on what the writer is willing do - and how he justifies it.
Darvill does a great job of in a way impersonating Gaiman - to inform his performance. And the story is rather wryly self deprecating, and critical of the writing profession as a result of both of these.
Also it focuses more the muse and less on Dream being the hero. He acts in revenge, while she focuses on being released and forgiveness. "Let him go, he is just a man."
Dream does punish him - by torturing him with nothing but ideas, and then taking them all away. And his muse is let go by one of his female students, who doesn't see her at all - just Eramus's long forgotten book.
It is important to do the Calliope story - since Calliope and Morpheus had a son together - Orpheus, who was killed, and whose story comes up later.
All in all, I've preferred the television adaptation to the comics. The violence against women is no longer shown. And in some cases understated or removed. In the comics - there was a lot of sexual violence, there's almost none here or if, present, it is just subtly alluded to. (A huge change from 1980s and 2022. Also shows how Neil Gaiman has evolved as a writer - since he's deeply involved in the adaptation.) In fact, I'd say for the most part the violence is down-played, they suggest but don't show it - going with less is more in most instances.
I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. And find that I want more of the series - and am hoping for a Season 2. (Hard to know with Netflix - Sandman is currently number 1 in the world - but it doesn't mean it will make it to a S2.)
This was the film that Tom Hanks was making in Australia when he caught COVID, I think. It is entirely filmed in Australia and Queensland, Australia (doubling for Vegas).
I was pleasantly surprised by it. I don't tend to like bio-pics. But this is by far the best bio-pic that I've seen, possibly next to Rocket Man and Walk the Line.
Mainly because it's not told like a straight bio-pic, and has a central focus. The problem with most bio-pic's - is they decide to give you some sort of shortened summarized history of a singer's or actor's or politician's life - and often focus on things like their addiction, their marriages, their kids,ie. personal life, but not on what they did for a living, which is the whole reason there is a bio-pic to begin with and really the only thing the biographer can tell with any authority or knowledge whatsoever. You can't tell what someone does in their personal life and you can't really judge it. Everyone remembers it differently. It gets embellished. Exaggerated. People make stuff up to make it more interesting - because let's face it people's personal lives are rather boring. ["I got up, I made food, I read the paper, I drank coffee, I played with kids, I had sex with my wife, I played music, I watched sports, I went to bed..." Or ..."I got up, I ate at restaurant, I went to work, I came home, went to gym, watched tv, ate dinner, watched tv, called someone, went to bed..." With all sorts of variations. Bored now.]
So there's two ways of approaching it...
1. Give people the dirt - or the soap opera. (Most famous people have a lot of soap opera, because how can you not? Fame is kind of toxic in of itself.)
Or
2. Focus on what they did, how they became famous, and what killed them.
Lurhmann wisely (in my opinion) chooses the latter. Wisely - because everyone else has already done the former. Kurt Russel played Elvis in a 1979 movie shortly after Elvis' death which dug deep into the former, as did numerous others. There's been a mini-series in there somewhere. Elvis has been picked apart, judged, scrutinized, and ruminated over since he died, if not before.
Here, Elvis isn't the person being scrutinized, but rather his manager, Colonel Parker is - and it becomes relatively apparent somewhere in the middle of the film - that no one has a clue who Parker really is.
Parker was a gambler and a con-man - who ran a carnival act. It had two low-tier family favorite country singers on tour, neither memorable in their own right. One day, people on his little tour are playing the radio - and across the air-waves comes Elvis' song "That's Alright Mama" which was released in 1954. People are loving it. Parker assumes it's a Black man singing it (actually the word he uses is "Negro"), and is astonished it's a white man, and his face lights up with an idea.
The film is for the most part told through Parker's perspective (although he comes across, as played by Hanks, as a big of a slug or leech or vampire, old, ugly as sin, overweight, sluggish, and with a heavily accented voice). And Parker is constantly justifying his actions towards Elvis, and deflecting the blame onto the audience who loved him. Or rather Elvis' addiction to that "love" and "applause".
Early on, a couple things are clear - Parker sees Elvis as a cash cow, and in Elvis, he has the human equivalent of lightening in a bottle. Elvis is the solution to all of Parker's ills - if he can just control him. Which he spends most of the movie attempting to do with mixed results.
Like all of Baz Luhrmann films - there is an underlying social commentary, also the focus is often on spectacle. Or how the art takes over, and almost becomes addictive in its own right. Racism is a character in the film - it's a notable theme, that is addressed sometimes outright, and sometimes subtly in the background.
The people who want to shut down Elvis - are racist bigots. With the Confederate Flag hanging behind them in stark relief, because Elvis dances and moves to music like a Black Man would, too lewd and crass for the white male power elite - who are shown in gray suits, with white creased back hair, short to the scalp, and wire rimmed glasses - sallow cheeks, and old.
Their skin is pale and white. Their clothing gray. They are shadow figures that lurk in the corners and come out to threaten, whenever Elvis steps out of line.
Elvis' friendship with BB King and various Black musicians is shown, but at the same time - it's clear that it is on the fringe, not front and center.
Parker attempts to stop it, but can't quite manage it.
The story is told in some respects like a musical - not a musical in the sense of Rocket Man, more like Walk the Line, with a lot more music intertwined within it. And once again, wisely, they manage to remaster the songs in such a way that it's not clear most of the time whether Butler or the real Elvis is actually singing the song. And in some cases, neither are at all - and the cover is being sung by someone else - showing how the meaning of the song changes depending on who sings it - as well as showing where Elvis' inspiration for singing it came from.
Elvis didn't listen or get inspiration from white musicians, he got it from Black musicians. And he didn't care. Hound Dog and That's Alright Mama are two songs that take center stage, sung by more than one person, along with Suspicious Minds. The other's fall a bit more into the background, although they are sung as well.
His film career is mentioned, but more as a passing highlight, as is his service and his courtship/engagement/marriage with Priscilla. Who in this version is barely noticeable next to him. Also they managed to cast someone who is the spitting image of the real Priscilla Pressely. In reality, she did disappear next to him - all you really saw was Elvis. [They've interviewed various celebrities who met them, including the Beatles, and all stated that while they know they met Priscilla, that they know she is a beautiful woman, that Elvis had introduced her, she was standing right next to Elvis, they don't really remember her, and barely saw her - at the time. All they saw was Elvis.]
Austin Butler, hands down, nails Elvis. I had watched a documentary film that aired in 1970, put together by Elvis and Col. Parker the previous weekend - show his Vegas show and recording sessions - and Butler had everything pitch perfect. His voice. His mannerisms. His charisma. His dance moves. His way of handling music. Everything. I honestly couldn't tell it wasn't Elvis at one point. He's that good. And I kind of fell in love with him a bit - which I can't say I ever did with the real deal. [I was only ten years of age when Elvis died, at the age of 42 in 1977.]
The film takes Elvis' life from his meeting with Parker (although Parker does talk about what happened before that point) up until his death. The story is told in flashbacks via Parker's eyes, as Parker wanders about Vegas, tied up to an IV, old and sunken in, and decrepit. No friends, family or hangers on to speak of. And it ends with Elvis' death, and Parker stating - "you may think I killed him, but it wasn't me - it was you, it was his love affair with all of you..." An interesting commentary that is a through line for some of Baz Luhrmann - where the audience is somehow complicit, just for arriving, paying for, watching and taking part in the spectacle.
And the final reel that plays over Parker's voice, sometimes blurring it out altogether - of the real Elvis, not Butler's version, playing one last time to a Vegas audience, and then his funeral, and the massive out-pouring of grief by the public...gets across that it's unclear whether Parker is right about that. Elvis could barely stand during his last performance. His performances in Vegas under hot lights, had over 50 songs, and he often collapsed afterwards from exhaustion. A tour most likely would have been less exhausting - since he'd have had less shows, and would have been forced to limit the number of songs he did, due to the limitations of venue. But Parker knew how to manipulate him, and how to seduce him - he knew where Elvis's weaknesses lied, and how to play on those weaknesses.
Parker introduced Elvis to the drugs that kept him on the stage, even when he was exhausted, and the drugs that helped him sleep. And at one point, he has a doctor inject him with adrenaline to keep him on stage.
Parker does not come out well in this movie. And it's oddly satisfying to learn that the Elvis Estate was able to split ties with him completely after Elvis' death. In a settlement agreement, Parker's ties with the estate were severed completely, and he could no longer get any interest, royalties or payment - Elvis could no longer make money for Parker.
Elvis himself does - for the most part. Since Lurhmann doesn't delve at all into Elvis' personal life, and steers away from some of the more controversial elements of that life. Instead focusing on what made Elvis so appealing to people, and how the very thing that made him successful aided in his destruction, and enabled him to be tempted by Parker and even pursued by him.
Hanks does a good job with Parker, but unlike Butler, never quite disappears into the role - I'm always aware on some level it is Hanks. No, the show is more or less Butler's and it is Butler who sells it and makes it work. And for a bio-pic about Elvis - that's how it should be.
2. The Sandman - Episode 11 : A Dream of A Thousand Cats, and Calliope
This episode contains as separately contained stories in their own rights two of The Sandman comics series "stand-a-alone" issues or "short tales", where Dream is a supporting player, not the focus or lead. [Actually this is true of most of Gaiman's works - his heroes are often not the focus of the story, but a means of meeting and telling the stories of other characters or in some regards a catalyst for them.] By separately contained - I mean they are told as two separate stories, the only connection between them is Dream.
"Sandman" is a notable series in that it was among the first truly literary stories to enter the comic book medium. The English Literature Canon is notoriously snooty and classicist. It frowns on other genres and deems them unworthy. Sandman kind of laughed at that - and pushed open that door a bit. It blended genres and commented on literary canon with a touch of sarcastic glee.
A Dream of a Thousand Cats
I was pleasantly surprised by this adaptation. The animation is quite good, and the cats really do look like cats. The vocal talents worked in some respects better than the audio - I preferred Sandra Oh to Bebe Neuwirth.
The story is kind of slyly humorous - about how Cats used to rule the earth and hunt humans, and enslave them. But humans out dreamed them, and dreamed the world as a place that they ruled, and cats were domesticated animals. The trick is for a thousand cats to dream again that they are the rules, and playing with the humans.
In short, your cat is secretly plotting to kill you.
Calliope
This also surprised me. I did not like the audio version and don't remember if I ever read the comic version.
The story is about a writer who tricks a muse into servicing his needs, until she basically refuses to help any longer, and he gives her to another writer. Calliope is the daughter of Zeus, and a thousand year old muse, who a writer, Eramus, has found a way to trap under the laws. She is basically his hostage until he frees her, instead he gifts her to another "frustrated" writer.
Arthur Darvill plays Mardoc, the "Frustrated" writer, while Derek Jacobi is the one who gifts the muse to him. Melissanthi Mahut plays the muse.
The television adaptation resolved some of the issues I'd had with it - To get inspired, the writer rapes the muse, who refuses to inspire him. In the television adaptation, unlike the comic and audiobook, the rape isn't shown, and barely suggested, in fact blink - and you won't know it happened it at all - I'm still not quite sure if it did. It's implied with knock on the door, a gasp, click on the keyboard, and blood on the face. And done after he gets more and more and more desperate. It's not shown for "gritty realism", how he got inspiration from the Muse - without her consent. The original - I had issues with - and the audio version sticks to the original, this version veers away, so the focus isn't on the muse's victimhood but on what the writer is willing do - and how he justifies it.
Darvill does a great job of in a way impersonating Gaiman - to inform his performance. And the story is rather wryly self deprecating, and critical of the writing profession as a result of both of these.
Also it focuses more the muse and less on Dream being the hero. He acts in revenge, while she focuses on being released and forgiveness. "Let him go, he is just a man."
Dream does punish him - by torturing him with nothing but ideas, and then taking them all away. And his muse is let go by one of his female students, who doesn't see her at all - just Eramus's long forgotten book.
It is important to do the Calliope story - since Calliope and Morpheus had a son together - Orpheus, who was killed, and whose story comes up later.
All in all, I've preferred the television adaptation to the comics. The violence against women is no longer shown. And in some cases understated or removed. In the comics - there was a lot of sexual violence, there's almost none here or if, present, it is just subtly alluded to. (A huge change from 1980s and 2022. Also shows how Neil Gaiman has evolved as a writer - since he's deeply involved in the adaptation.) In fact, I'd say for the most part the violence is down-played, they suggest but don't show it - going with less is more in most instances.
I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. And find that I want more of the series - and am hoping for a Season 2. (Hard to know with Netflix - Sandman is currently number 1 in the world - but it doesn't mean it will make it to a S2.)
no subject
Date: 2022-08-21 05:55 pm (UTC)This is an excellent point. And it also highlights one of the reasons I so rarely watch entertainer biopics anymore because I'm so tired of the predictable pattern they follow which is almost always drugs and excess leading to either (a) the end or (b) a recovery and second career phase which is nevertheless not explored.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-21 10:03 pm (UTC)I found the Judy biopic interesting because it too veered away from doing that to a certain extent, and focused more on her trying to do her final performance. It was told more in the style of a play.
Elvis focuses mostly on his music and how those around him, specifically Parker, attempt to contain lightening in a bottle or manipulate it. Which is far more interesting, than the personal stuff. Because let's face it - biographers are going to disagree with the director's interpretation anyhow, might as well focus on what is for the most part known and agreed on - and how the performer got there.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-21 10:23 pm (UTC)He didn't care if he got the story right - he was exploring the idea that Elvis represented. That's how you do a biopic or make it interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPcwWeJ92VE
Austin Butler - also was most interested in hunting who Elvis was behind all the talent. What motivated him and made him human.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-22 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-21 06:21 pm (UTC)The last biopic that I watched was the Lucille Ball one - I thought they also did a good job of balancing the personal bits with Lucille's personality - what we saw on tv/movies but also stuff I didn't know so much about her and Desi's business acumen.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-21 10:04 pm (UTC)