Baz Luhrmann came to the Toronto International Film Festival thee years ago with his movie “Elvis,” which survived a lengthy, pandemic-delayed production to land eight Oscar nominations and earn almost $300 million worldwide. You’d think that he’d be ready to move on at rhetorical end of that journey, but Luhrmann was back at TIFF on Saturday with another Elvis movie, this one titled “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert.”
The title seems as if it could tell you everything you need to know about the movie, but Luhrmann has grander ambitions than that. The film is an Elvis concert movie of sorts, drawn mostly from footage filmed for a pair of early 1970s documentaries, “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” and “Elvis on Tour.” But it’s far from a straight concert film, because it mixes concert footage with rehearsals, studio sessions, archival materials and voiceovers in which Elvis describes his life in a way that seems more casual and perhaps more honest than most of his public statements.
Luhrmann calls it a “tone poem,” but you can also think of it as a remix along the lines of the nerviest moments from Luhrmann’s last Elvis movie, when a song might start with the familiar Elvis version, performed by Elvis or by star Austin Butler or by a mixture of the two, but also bring in hip-hop elements before it’s done.
“EPiC” is Elvis through the Baz lens, where big and bold is always preferable to straightforward and where going over-the-top is never considered a bad thing. If it’s not revelatory for people who’ve seen the existing films from the era, it’s the most imaginative, generous and entertaining look at a time in which Elvis’ comeback still had real life to it.
It’s also got a great beat and you can dance to it, as the audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre did.
(Of course, Luhrmann may have helped prompt that by his pre-screening comment that he’d be looking for the most enthusiastic audience members and giving them swag.)
The film is based around shows Elvis did at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in the summer of 1970; it wasn’t his return to live performances, which had happened in the previous year, but a later engagement that was filmed for the movie “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is.” But a few other shows also went into the mix,which means we get to chart a year or two of Elvis by his jumpsuits: the white, studded look of those ’70 first Vegas shows; a light blue number that found Elvis a little paler and puffier, featured in “Elvis on Tour,”; a dark blue suit that fell in between.
And the performance veer between playful and passionate, with Elvis in great voice throughout on the raw rock ‘n’ roll songs from his past and the full-throated ballads to which he would increasingly turn for the remainder of his career. Highlights include the first-ever live performance of “Burning Love,” a tantalizing few moments of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and the arrival of “Suspicious Minds” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as true showstoppers.
“EPiC” is a film that more or less follows an Elvis show but is always on the move in and around that show. Offstage Elvis informs onstage Elvis and vice versa, and the zeal with which Luhrmann whips it all up into an undefinable Elvispalooza is fit for a King.
