Butler’s great impersonator, but Baz doesn’t capture the complicated King

The first shot of Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” isn’t Austin Butler in the titular role, or blue suede shoes: It’s a chintzy gift shop snowman-shaped snow globe, only seen for a moment, before Luhrmann takes us inside the glass of his tragic tale, Rosebud-style.

That’s because the movie is as much about Elvis Presley’s manager, the disgraced Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) — the “snowman” dusting everyone with money — as it is about Presley. Parker managed Presley for most of his career, was later sued for mismanagement and is likely guilty, the movie declares, of “financial abuse” of the singer.

Parker and his tacky snow globes and carnival attitude toward art represent everything that the name Presley has been lampooned for ad nauseam: The Elvis impersonators, the “thank you, thankyouverymuch,” the jaw-high rhinestone collars — the things that are not Presley, but rather a critique of unselfconscious commercialization of his icon.

There is another moment toward the end of the movie — the emotional climax — where Presley tries to extricate himself from Parker’s claws. Parker tells Presley he can’t end their business partnership, because their finances are inextricably linked — but so are their fates. The subtext: Presley exploited Black music on his way to fame, and Parker exploited him. But that subtext is too subtle to feel intentional in a Luhrmann movie.

As it is, “Elvis” is a gorgeous tragedy, a movie mixtape with a sonorous performance at its core, maybe Luhrmann’s best since “Romeo + Juliet” (1996). But it has a rubberized script, a turgid length and a key issue that affects many musical biopics: It’s not really sure what it thinks or wants to say about Presley. It wants to show where the King’s music came from — Black musicians — but doesn’t want to offend the King’s fans.

As it is, the movie shows American Black culture as the source from which Presley draws his superpowers, but that siphoning comes across as morally neutral. Black characters comment on his appropriation of their music with a shrug or a can’t-help-butlove-you gaze. The result is a Presley who isn’t daring enough to be complicated.

It feels like a stark contrast when real footage of Presley appears on the screen and one is reminded of the simple, earnest Presley who popped his collars because he was supposedly self-conscious about his skinny neck. There’s little of that Presley in this.