[yasr_overall_rating]
Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, a musical road trip across America in his 1963 Rolls Royce explores how a country boy lost his authenticity and became a king while his country lost her democracy and became an empire.
When the film “The King” first appeared on my radar screen, I wondered if the world really needed another biopic about Elvis Presley. Sure, Elvis still has legions of fans. However, this is a film written and directed by Eugene Jarecki, a social injustice ambassador, who uses film as his vehicle to deliver a message. If his name is not familiar to you, it should be! Jarecki’s films were awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, in 2005 and 2012 (“Why We Fight” and “The House I Live In,” respectively). Surely, I thought, it delves in deeper. And indeed it does. Make sure your seatbelt is fastened because you’re taking a ride down a path of which only Jarecki has the directions. All puns intended.
The fascinating documentary, which had its international premiere at Cannes, takes us on a musical road trip while seated in the back of the 1963 Rolls-Royce that once belonged to Elvis. And it is stunning – both the car and the story; drawing a metaphorical parallel between Elvis, the superstar, and America, the superpower. Through archive footage, musical interludes and interviews of both celebrities and folks along the route from Tupelo to New York and Las Vegas, Jarecki steers us to the rise and fall of Presley and how it relates to the evolution of politics in this country and the American dream. Only Eugene Jarecki could substantially handle a correlation based on that premise.
I recommend “The King” not only to lovers of Elvis Presley but to all those interested in understanding and reflecting on American history in recent decades. It meanders a bit when the celebrities begin musing about fame, but it mostly stays on topic and is at its best when the musicians start strumming and the singers vocalize.
In an interview, Jarecki told me that he is taking this film on the road over the coming year or two, and reaching out to people to try and provoke conversation. He’d like to use the film to reach people and to encourage them to think more deeply inside themselves about who we all are, how we got here, and the not so simple answers.
After viewing the film, like Mike Myers, (who is featured in the film), you’ll be likely to want to “talk amongst yourselves.”
Opens Friday, July 20th at the Angelika Film Centers in Dallas and Plano
Hi Ms. Kandall. Great review but probably one of the few people who really understood Elvis Presley was Stephen Barnard. In his book “Popular Music, Volume I: Folk or Popular?”, a publication director Jarecky should have read before trying to make any metaphor,especially about Presley, he describes him as follows. And I quote ‘He never understood the artistic claims that were made for him, probably thought very little of the nature of his appeal or his music; yet, as author Greil Marcus points out in ‘Mystery Train’, it is possible to see (all that) as a positive factor; Presley viewed… Read more »