Elvis vs Priscilla movie review
Recreation of Elvis and Priscilla Presley's wedding in Priscilla (Photo from IMDB)
By Cuellar Calais, staff writer
In retaliation to Elvis: Sofia Coppola’s new film exposing a different side of Elvis Presley
Contradicting last year’s film about Elvis Presley’s life, accredited director Sofia Coppola has narrowed down the story's focus to his marriage, exposing a very different side of the famous rock and roll singer. While Presley passed away almost 50 years ago, he is still highly regarded for his massive contribution to the music industry and is easily recognizable from his glamorous outfits and deep southern accent.
His story interested many film studios, having a “rag-to-riches” element and dealing with the pressures of fame. It’s been told on the big screen before, but last year Presley’s name was raved about once again when Elvis premiered. The movie was successful at the box office, grossing $288.7 million, but it ignored a vital part of Elvis’s character. The thirteen-year-long romantic relationship between Priscilla Presley which Coppola solely focuses on in her new movie, Priscilla. This smaller scale flips the narrative of the Elvis movie, better understanding Priscilla and her evolution while knowing Presley.
Through the lens of Presley’s manager Tom Parker, the 2022 blockbuster Elvis had a budget of $85 million and was meant to capture Elvis Presley and the infamous 50s/'60s time period. It was also Warner Bros. Pictures' attempt to get people in the theaters after poor attendance caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and to receive Academy Awards. However, Baz Luhrmann’s retelling of Elvis Presley’s life fell heavily on the performance of Austin Butler and less on telling a cohesive story. This is unfortunate as Austin Butler did not win best actor despite having a dialect, movement, acting, and signing coaches and having years to prepare due to the pandemic. While the audience gets a better understanding of Elvis’s childhood and his manager's manipulative behavior toward the singer, the two-hour and 40-minute movie lacks any depth into his life. The fast-paced editing style only introduces new things into Elvis’s life, but never gives more than that, leaving the audience with only a little more than a basic understanding of his life. For what it was built to be, the movie never exceeded mediocrity.
Coppola decided to dive into a more integral part of Elvis’s life regarding his relationship with his wife. Rather than the story being centered around Presley, we see the story through the eyes of Priscilla Presley as her life drastically changes due to her involvement with him. Their story is told through small clips of their life in which the audience can gain a feel for what their dynamic looked like. At times Elvis feels disorganized, and Priscilla is a precise film that can tell such an intricate story in a shorter amount of time. The movie begins with their meeting in Germany, in 1958 where Priscilla’s father and Elvis were stationed. The most important thing in which the movie Elvis neglects to inform the audience is the ten-year age difference between the couple. When we meet Priscilla, she is only a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl who catches the attention of the twenty-four-year-old musician.
In Elvis, Priscilla is referred to as “the pretty teenage daughter of the United States Air Force officer” and their age difference is never mentioned again. While large age gaps were normalized in the 1950s and 60s, their relationship was still considered inappropriate as Priscilla was a minor. Due to Elvis’s very rushed nature, we don’t see how their relationship played out but it is cut to them getting married and having a child within minutes.
The movie is a signature of Coppola’s style, soft and feminine tones, and elements that further add to Priscilla’s innocence of being so young. Priscilla allows the audience to see how this relationship progressed, and sometimes even adore them. We go along with Priscilla when she moves into Elvis’s estate, Graceland, at the age of seventeen which is as strange to us as it was to her. His excitement about having a first child when she was 23 years old was met with indifference at the fact that she had never explored life outside her childhood homes and Graceland.
Most of the movie took information from Priscilla Presley’s autobiography about her time with Elvis called Elvis and Me. Like most biopics, Priscilla took liberties but was faithful in the fact that Presley was extremely controlling and at times physically abusive to her. In the movie, we see him dictate her appearance such as how to dye her hair, apply dark makeup, and wear more “flattering” clothes for his approval. As well as not allowing her to go out with girls her age or get a job because of the security risk it might be to Elvis. Sofia Coppola’s movie explores something the 2023 movie was too scared to show, which is how abusive Elvis was to her during their time together. The story turns more extreme with random outbursts where Elvis gets violent with Priscilla and at the climax of the story, throws a chair at her. These are all things Priscilla accounts for happening and the addition of Elvis’s drug use and infidelity leads to the end of their relationship. It was also a time for Priscilla to escape the harsh opinion of Elvis and become independent finally. Having no experiences of her own, she was freed when she left Graceland.
The insight into how Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, exploited the musician and inevitably led him to excessive drug use in Elvis, is necessary when regarding his life and death. However, it’s irresponsible to ignore Elvis’s exploitation of Priscilla, their age difference, and his status making her very vulnerable to his control. Their marriage was the result of a power imbalance which left her isolated in the world of fame and so eager to please her husband that she was devoid of any opinions of her own. We see her enter this relationship as a fourteen-year-old girl, naive to the problematic nature of it, and escape it as a woman who desires her independence and finds her identity rather than being accepted in a superficial world.