The King is guilty of Elvis sin — excess
Print Edition
IT’S usually a bad sign when critics start questioning your film before it’s even finished. But director Eugene Jarecki had to endure worse. While making the documentary “The King,” he actually got gruff from a member of his own film crew.
After a car breaks down, Jarecki takes the opportunity to ask the driver of the truck hauling it to be fixed what he thinks of the film so far. The crewman says he’s not sure what Jarecki’s intention is and doesn’t really buy the tenuous analogy he’s developed so far.
Credit Jarecki for including the exchange in his meandering, overstuffed and sometimes fascinating film about Elvis Presley and America.
The idea is: Get Elvis’ old 1963 Rolls-Royce and invite a wide group of people to sit in its back seat and talk about Presley as they drive through key locations in The King’s life.
Emmylou Harris calls him a “Greek tragic figure,” while Chuck D explains why he once wrote that Elvis was no “hero to me.” John Hiatt even starts to cry in the back seat, profoundly sad for a fellow musician who was “trapped” in his fame. But Jarecki seems to want something deeper. Perhaps the rise and fall of Elvis is a reflection of post-World War II America as it morphed from small to imperial and then sick and bloated? Maybe he’s even a reflection of the history of the country — from poor and fragile in 1776 to the hottest thing on the planet as a superpower to later addicted to pills and destined to die on a golden toilet at 42?
Throughout “The King,” you can feel Jarecki is trying to make connections. What could have been a personal travelogue is reworked until it’s guilty of Elvis’ last sin — excess.
This film is cluttered with half-thoughts and tenuous connections. The best parts are when African-American critics like Chuck D and Van Jones dig into Elvis, a man who made a fortune taking black music and making it palatable for whites. Yet Presley never marched for civil rights or used his fame to help the people he plundered. Other valuable spots are when the filmmakers explore poverty, race and the decline of the American dream at the hands of corporations, slick imagery and heaps of cash. But, wasn’t this supposed to be about Elvis?
Then there’s that moment when the Rolls-Royce breaks down and everyone tries to make that an analogy of post-industrial America. Jarecki comes into some good-natured ribbing for using Elvis’ Rolls-Royce, which is an English car. Why didn’t he use one of Presley’s old Cadillacs, a more perfect symbol of America’s trials and tribulations. That’s what this whole film feels like — forever looking for an analogy that fits.
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