Take a fascinating ride with ‘The King’
Eugene Jarecki’s “The King” is more than a hybrid documentary/road movie about Elvis Presley, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. It’s a poetic meditation upon the path America has traveled in the more than 60 years since Elvis, a handsome, sleepy-eyed, talented, not very well-educated laborer and part-time musician from Tupelo, Miss., emerged to become a rock ’n’ roll sensation and global superstar in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s and a cultural touchstone.
Coming along for a ride in Elvis’ vintage, not very reliable 1963 Rolls Royce is Alec Baldwin, who at one point during the late 2016 shooting of the film, in a moment of grotesque irony, announces that Donald Trump will not win the election. Also here are former Bill Clinton aide James Carville, Greil Marcus, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Ethan Hawke, Emmylou Harris, Ashton Kutcher, a very Canadian Mike Myers and an emotional John Hiatt.
Jarecki starts in Tupelo, where he asks residents, whose town still ekes out profits as the birthplace of the King, what they think has happened to America since Elvis’ death. The answers he gets reveal a dark, angry despair in the heartland. We learn how Elvis met Sam Phillips of Sun Records, who’d tried to help black artists “crossover” and failed and found the answer in this young white man with an African-American sound. Yes, Elvis appropriated black culture.
But he also borrowed greatly from country music. Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” was penned by a Jewish writing team, and Elvis’ version was very different from Thornton’s. A fiery Chuck D notes that while many white celebrities marched with Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, including Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando, Elvis, who inarguably owed a huge debt to black musical culture, did not, nor did he come out in support of civil rights. Are you ready to hear that we have traded the fabled “American Dream” for a culture of “corporate sharecropping”? A voice in the film argues that Elvis and Dutchborn manager Col. Tom Parker were only interested in the money and that led to Elvis’ shocking, drug-fueled decline and premature death at age 42.
Social media music sensation EmiSunshine makes an appearance with her band in the Rolls’ backseat, belting out her hit cover of Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel #6” and knocking the movie for a fun loop. But mixing archival footage of everything from civil rights marches and Elvis’ triumphant 1968 TV “comeback concert” to images of the going-to-seed rock star hanging out with disgraced Richard Nixon and footage of Vietnam and anti-war protests, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Jarecki (“The Trials of Henry Kissinger”) has made a biographical-historical musical about the soul of the country and how Elvis remains one of the few things we all share. The talent and genius of Elvis Presley have lifted us and inspired many to dig into their roots and discover many things, some of them revelatory about our country, our music and ourselves. Long live “The King.” (“The King” contains profanity.)