by It’s hard to imagine two movies more different than Elvis and Priscilla. The first, directed by Baz Luhrmann and released in 2022, charts the rise and fall of Elvis Presley on an operatic scale, focusing on his complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and presenting him as nothing short of the world’s greatest martyr. pop. The latter, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, based on the memoirs of Priscilla Presley and released in the UK this week, is dreamy and intimate, focusing on Priscilla’s life in relationship with Elvis, her partner of 14 years during the heyday of his professional career. But which one was closer to the facts?
The wonder of you: representations of the King
Three Elvis experts I spoke to agree that, overall, Austin Butler, who played Elvis in Luhrmann’s film, did a better job capturing the King’s mannerisms. Jeff Schrembs, owner of one of the world’s largest private Elvis collections, says Butler “understood many of Elvis’s hand movements and dancing well,” while Suzanne Finstad, author of Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, says Butler captured the sense that Elvis was “complicated, charismatic but compassionate, sometimes tender but always confrontational.”
Finstad and Schrembs feel that Elvis, played by Jacob Elordi in Priscilla, was much more subtly drawn. “To me, the character as written was very buffoonish,” Finstad says. “I thought the whole Presley family in Priscilla almost looked like the Beverly Hillbillies, with Elvis being a kind of predatory Jethro Bodine. “I didn’t feel the magic, the electricity, the sensitivity that Elvis had.”
Alanna Nash, author of four books about Elvis, including The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley and Baby, Let’s Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him, says Butler was “a spectacular performer in the stage,” but “He didn’t have Elvis’s fine-featured beauty and he never managed to speak.” Elordi, on the other hand, although strikingly tall, “was eerily good at Elvis’s low murmur, the only actor who ever captured that correctly.”
Are you alone tonight?: representations of Priscilla
Nash says that while Olivia DeJonge, who played Priscilla in Elvis, was “charming,” she ultimately “wasn’t very convincing as the young Priscilla.” On the other hand, Coppola’s star Cailee Spaeny “was wonderful at capturing the eyes of that wide-eyed young woman, and also at telegraphing the boredom of being ‘caged’ at Graceland as the woman always waiting.”
However, Finstad points out that while Spaeny nailed her portrayal of Priscilla once she arrives at Graceland (after she begins combing her hair with a beehive and layers upon layers of false eyelashes), Coppola’s pre-Elvis portrayal of Priscilla, as a relatively tame, mousy-haired girl whom Elvis later transformed into his own image, does not match the facts. “Priscilla was very interested in makeup and she had very dark hair at the time she met Elvis; It’s not like he takes a little brown wren and puts all this makeup on her and plays with her hair and turns her into a different person. “she says. While Priscilla was remodeled at Graceland to more closely resemble the look she liked Elvis, Finstad says she doesn’t “believe that can simply be attributed to Elvis’s feet; “It was something that Priscilla was complicit in,” and that Coppola’s version of the events “distorts reality and heightens the sense that something is a little off in the relationship.”
I Can’t Help Falling in Love: Elvis and Priscilla’s First Meeting
While Luhrmann only briefly describes Elvis and Priscilla’s first meeting (perhaps to avoid having to deal with the fact that Priscilla was 14 at the time), Coppola’s film does, showing the moment when one of Elvis’s friends approach her in a restaurant and ask her. attend a party at Elvis’ house, an idea that Priscilla’s parents strongly resist.
Finstad says that, according to her research, Priscilla’s parents were actually “very excited” about their daughter’s relationship with Elvis. “Her mother was an Elvis fan before the family moved to Germany and she was delighted that Priscilla was dating him,” she says. “She had no problem with Priscilla spending the nights in Elvis’ room until midnight, 1 in the morning.”
Elvis’s entourage – the “Memphis Mafia” – expresses no concern about Priscilla’s age in any of the films, which Nash claims was also a fiction. “The guys around Elvis were terrified,” he says, pointing to a section of his book Elvis and the Memphis Mafia in which the singer’s production manager, Lamar Fike, remembers telling Elvis: “We’re going to end up in prison for life.” “.
Finstad also says that Priscilla’s fanaticism for Elvis at the time is greatly downplayed in Coppola’s film. “She wanted to meet Elvis more than anything when he came to Germany. “I found a newspaper article from the 1950s and it quotes Priscilla as saying that she told her cousin that her goal when she was in Germany was to meet Elvis Presley,” she says. “All that is left out of [the film Priscilla]and it seems like a fairy tale where an anonymous person appears out of nowhere and asks this young woman if she would like to meet Elvis.”
A Little Less Talk: Elvis and Priscilla’s Relationship
Both films portray the couple’s relationship as toxic and deeply fractured, although Coppola’s film, given its focus on Priscilla, understandably delves deeper into their dynamic. Schrembs says the second film rightly included “some nice moments” in addition to the volatility. “There was a lot of that during her marriage: the way Elvis adored her,” she says. “There was no doubt that he loved her, especially when she was pregnant with Lisa Marie.”
Nash says that Coppola’s portrayal of Elvis as someone with a number of relative sexual pathologies (in the film, he largely forgoes sex in favor of pillow fights and photo sessions with Priscilla) is “true, according to Priscilla’s previous stories, but he lost interest in her sexually only after Lisa was born. That said, he was never faithful to any woman.
Finstad says Elvis’s spirituality is largely glossed over or mocked in Coppola’s film, diminishing the seriousness with which he took it. “At one point in his career, when he was enormously famous, Elvis seriously thought about becoming a monk,” he says. “He was trying to deal with fame and a lifestyle that was very different from his humble upbringing, and the way he presents himself in Priscilla, it’s downplayed. The truth is that Priscilla had no interest in hearing Elvis discuss this.”
Luhrmann’s film, on the other hand, “understands that Elvis was really influenced by black music and gospel music, that was in his soul. That is completely missing in Priscilla and as a result we have a superficial version of Elvis and Priscilla.”
Suspicious Minds: Final Thoughts
According to Nash, neither film strikes the right balance in terms of portraying the complexities of the Presleys’ world. “Coppola’s film doesn’t show us any of his good times after Germany; the second half is built on all the negativity, to the point where it’s like he never had any fun at all, with or without Elvis,” he says. “If Luhrmann’s film is unfair to Colonel Parker, Coppola’s is unfair to Elvis, by omission. Surely there is a middle ground between the softness of Priscilla and the phantasmagoria of Elvis.”
Finstad says that while you come away from Luhrmann’s film “feeling like you met Elvis Presley,” Coppola’s effort feels “a little empty, because Elvis’s character is so one-dimensional that you don’t really get a sense of who he was.” the man”. ”.
“[Priscilla portrayed] the inappropriateness of the relationship between a 14-year-old girl and a grown man, and how lost she was as a child trying to compete with Ann-Margret and Juliet Prowse,” adds Finstad. “I think that part is okay.”
