Elvis

**Elvis: The King Who Never Left**

The stage is ablaze. A young man with a snake's hips and a thunderous voice tears through the air with *Hound Dog* as the audience goes wild. It's not 1956, but 2022, and Austin Butler has just stolen Elvis Presley's soul on screen. The film, directed by Baz Luhrmann, is not just a biopic: it's an earthquake of sequins, sweat, and tragedy that shook the BAFTAs — where Butler took home the Best Actor award — and made it clear that the myth is still alive.

Luhrmann doesn't make cinema, he makes opera. Each shot is an excess: neon lights, screaming suits, sweaty close-ups. The result is a rollercoaster that alternates between the euphoria of Elvis' early years — when he invented rock with a hip swivel — and the decadence of Las Vegas, where the king drowned in pills and predatory contracts. There's no middle ground. You either love the spectacle or drown in it.

Butler doesn't imitate Elvis: he inhabits him. For two and a half years, he lived with his accent, his tics, his way of walking. The result is chilling. When he sings *Suspicious Minds* in the film, it doesn't sound like a tribute, it sounds like a resurrection. Tom Hanks, as Colonel Parker, is the other side of the coin: a villain with a shark's smile who manipulates Elvis like a puppet. The chemistry between them is pure dynamite.

Is it perfect? No. Luhrmann sometimes gets lost in his own whirlwind, and the pace suffers in the second half. But when he hits the mark — and he hits it often — *Elvis* is cinema in its purest form. It's not a film about a singer, but about the price of being an idol. And about how, even dead, Elvis still moves his hips. Brutal.

Butler embodies the king with overwhelming energy. The film works.

" You're gonna have to ride the whole damn train — Colonel Tom Parker