Joel on Film

There are a lot of thrilling and even spectacular moments in EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, but what’s genuinely surprising about director Baz Luhrmann’s documentary is that, by utilizing the close-ups found within the archival concert footage that makes up the majority of the running time, we also get an intimate sense of the King of Rock and Roll himself. This is Elvis Presley’s legendary residency in Las Vegas during the 1970s—technically past the “prime” of his stardom but, because he was almost mythical by this point, in that arena of ubiquitousness within the popular culture. That alone would be worth the price of admission here.

Few humans in the history of the expressive form of music have been as immediately iconic as Elvis (whose name, surely is worth relaxing the typical journalistic rule about surnames for the duration of a single review), and it’s entirely possible that no other artist contained his commitment to showmanship (though a pop icon that came a generation later and even, however briefly, became his son-in-law for a time might offer some competition in that area). Luhrmann, of course, is no stranger to Elvis iconography, having directed a fitfully rousing screen biography a few years ago. The genesis of this project is the research he put into that earlier effort.

With all due respect to the award-winning actor who went through months of effort and came out the other side with a genuinely great performance, there’s nothing like watching the actual man do his thing with frightening precision. There’s a brief moment here, captured near the end of our journey through his residency, where it seems like Elvis is about to break—in voice, in body, in spirit—from the exertion he’s put into his performance of a perennial favorite. That, though, is exactly when he rallies and follows through with a particularly showstopping moment in the set.

Such was the experience of watching Elvis in concert, which this movie—exquisitely edited by Jonathan Raymond—seeks to communicate to us, with its remastered visual treatment (presented on IMAX screens but spectacular in whatever theatrical format is chosen, really) and presentation of performances. In collaboration with Raymond’s editing, the sound mix has been lined up so that multiple performances of a single song will travel seamlessly, sometimes even within the space of a single word in the lyrics. The movie, then, is not just a litany of one performance after another, even in its functionality as a concert doc.

The film, though, is also a sneakily effective screen biography of sorts, rarely shortchanging development for the sake of the spectacle. Only a few instances—such as a political question about the war effort, asked during a tour promotion, that he didn’t want to answer just then—distract from the crystal-clear portrait drawn here, of a generally good guy nearly (but not always) swallowed up by the system, thanks to his manager Col. Tom Parker. Viewers of the narrative film will remember that Luhrmann leaned to heavily into that figure and its actor’s weird performance, and seemingly in response to that, Parker merely looms in the background here as a weird phantom.

Here, the most important periods of Elvis’ life that are haunting him during the representative present of the Las Vegas performance are those during which he was drafted to fight in the war in Vietnam and when a movie contract fastened him to a studio and a process that refused to allow him to challenge himself. Narration, by way of archival footage observed by Luhrmann during the making of the 2022 film, means we hear the voice of Elvis himself. His gratefulness, his fears, his insecurities, and his humility are all on display within those recordings, and that, more than even the video of pomp and performances, is an incredible gift.

It elevates the film far beyond being a functional concert doc and into the territory of genuine human study, and if we’re to doubt that, we just need to look once again at those close-ups—of a man whose playfulness, determination, and hint of lonesome sadness made him a star. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert is a notable documentary achievement—a thrilling showcase and an intimate portrait, simultaneously.

Rating: ***½ (out of ****)