Tom Hanks, Austin Butler and Baz Luhrmann in Cannes. Photo: EFE
Almost a decade after its adaptation of The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrman returned to the big screen with another over-the-top cinematic experience: his movie King of Rock and Roll.: Elvis.
The film took a long time to arrive, according to the site slashfilm. Not only because of Luhrmann’s “eccentric” cinematic style, but also because the director was on the verge of abandoning the project.
The Elvis story was first announced in 2014, but then the idea fell by the wayside until 2019 when Tom Hanks he was brought aboard to play the colonel Tom Parker. Finally, the time has come for the cameras to start rolling. It was 2020.
Baz Luhrmann, Olivia DeJonge, Austin Butler and Tom Hanks in Cannes, AP Photo
the pandemic
After a decade of constant development, Elvis It ended up being one of the first productions hit by the pandemic when Hanks had Covid (in 2020). While I was talking with IndieWire last month Luhrmann said: “It’s really hard to remember how naive the world was. We had no idea. That of Covid was like a bomb “.
Luhrmann initially thought the film was in danger of falling through the cracks, and in the early days of the pandemic blockade, even that grim reality hit him particularly hard:
“In the beginning there was a lot of pressure on me. I was with my children and I said wow, maybe I don’t have to do the movie¡I’m locked up and out of trouble …! “
Elvis Presley versus actor Austin Butler. AP photo
Tom Hanks told Luhrmann: “Well, maybe we can wait until February when it’s all over.” But according to the director, “the film was absolutely slipping away from me“.
A maximalist director
A Baz Luhrmann film is not an easy task. is approx a maximalist director: the type of show they present The Great Gatsby Y Moulin Rouge it’s not easy to deal with. The elaborate choreography and dazzling sets would not be possible were it not for the long process of their creation.
Shot where the actress Carey Mulligan appears in the role of Daisy Buchanan and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of Jay Gatsby, during a scene from the film “The Great Gatsby” by Baz Luhrmann. photo EFE
So while the wait was a hassle, having extra time ended up being useful to Luhrmann: he went back to the script, he restructured the entire first part, and in a pandemic he ended up altering the story “from linear” to something “more sophisticated”. . “
The wait would have been worth it. In his review, Rafael Motamayor of Movie described Elvis as “the most Baz Luhrmann film Baz Luhrmann has ever made, a collection of his greatest blockbusters, an excessive and grandiose film like Elvis himself “.
Frames has also issued: “Elvis isn’t a biopic, it’s not even a musical, even if there are songs and these are responsible for marking the turning points of the character. It is more an introspective and historical journey (even a political one), a frenetic journey into the bowels of an America full of contradictions in which there is room for dreams and also for moral collapse ”
“The director plays with the plots in his demiurge way, with the rhythm and narrative times, and adapts the changes of time to the very impulses of the protagonist, in an intense existential range that ranges from innocence to the perversion of fame, of disappointment and agony “.
In Argentina, the movie about Elvis already has a release date: July 14.
MFB
Source: Clarin
