Baz Luhrmann came to the Toronto International Film Festival Thee year ago with its movie “Elvis”, which survived a long, pandemic delayed production to land eight Oscar nominations and earn almost $ 300 million all over the world. You would think he would be ready to move on to a rhetorical end of that trip, but Luhrmann was back on TIFF on Saturday with another Elvis movie, this one with the title “Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert.”
The title seems like it can tell you everything you need to know about the movie, but Luhrmann has greater ambitions than that. The film is an Elvis concert movie of sorting, mostly from pictures filmed for a couple in the early 1970s documentaries, “Elvis: That’s the way it’s” and “Elvis on tour.” But it is far from a straight concert film, as it mixes concert films with repetitions, studio sessions, archive material and voiceovers where Elvis describes his life in a way that seems more relaxed and perhaps more honest than most of his public statements.
Luhrmann calls it a “tondic”, but you can also think of it as a remix in line with the nervous moments from Luhrmann’s last Elvis movie, when a song can start with the familiar Elvis version, performed by Elvis or by Star Austin Butler or by a mixture of the two, but also for in hip-hop.
“Epic” is Elvis through the Baz lens, where big and bold is always preferable to and where to go over-the-top is never considered a bad thing. If it is not revealing to people who have seen the existing films from the era, it is the most imaginative, generous and entertaining look at a time when Elvis’s comeback still had real life.
It also has a great pace and you can dance to it, as the audience at the Princess of Wales Theater did.
(Of course, Luhrmann may have helped to urge it through his pre -comment that he would look for the most enthusiastic audience members and give them Swag.)
The film is based on shows that Elvis made at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in the summer of 1970; It was not his return to live performances, which had happened last year, but a later commitment that was filmed for the movie “Elvis: That’s the way it’s.” But some other shows also entered the mix, which means we will map a year or two of Elvis through his jumpsuits: the white, obsessed with the appearance of these ’70 first Vegas show; A light blue number that found Elvis a little paler and puffier, included in the “Elvis on tour,”; A dark blue suit that fell in between.
And the performance between playful and passionate, with Elvis with a big voice all the time on raw rock ‘n’ roll songs from his past and the full ballads that he would increasingly turn for the rest of his career. Highlights include the first live performance ever by “Burning Love”, an attractive a few moments of Bob Dylans “I will be released” and the arrival of “suspected mind” and “cannot help fall in love” as true show stops.
“Epic” is a movie that more or less follows an Elvis show but is always on its way in and around that show. Offstage Elvis informs on stage Elvis and vice versa, and the zeal that Luhrmann whips everything up to an undefined electricity visepalooza is suitable for a king.
