Near the beginning of EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert, the title personage observes that people can listen to music at home. If they come to a live performance, he says, “they want a show.”
Audiences who come to this movie will certainly get a dose of remarkable footage, restored and assembled by filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, who directed Austin Butler to an Oscar nomination in the 2022 biopic Elvis. But I’m not sure we ever really get “a show.”
Opening wide this weekend after a week exclusively on IMAX screens, EPIC starts with a speedily-edited summary of Presley’s early career, his detractors who condemned the moves of his gyrating pelvis, his military service, his movie career, etc. Toward the end of the ’60s, he pointedly walked away from the inane movie vehicles he was given and decided to return to live shows. The footage we see here reveals his preparation for these shows, starting in Vegas, and then the shows themselves.
The star’s presence and energy are riveting, and his voice is stirring. But almost every number is truncated and/or interrupted by voice-over commentary by The King itself. The movie didn’t give me the feel of a sustained concert performance. In the scenes of preparation for the show, we get tantalizing snatches of Elvis trying out songs ranging from “Ghost Riders in the Sky” to “Runaway” to “Yesterday,” among many others. I would far rather have heard full versions of this stuff than the interview material, touching though some of it is.
EPIC is also troubling because it depicts the beginning of the slide. Elvis is still svelte and nimble in this vintage, but we get the first glimpses of the sweaty, puffy, bleary-eyed, sheepishly self-conscious lounge lizard that gradually replaced the shimmying, insolently confident Dionysus from The Ed Sullivan Show, and it gives the movie a tinge of poignancy.
Despite these reservations, as a casual Elvis fan at most, I found EPIC engrossing. For a serious fan, it’s obviously a must-see.
