As Colonel Tom Parker (over)explains in Elvis, “The carnival act that would get you the most money…had great costumes and a unique trick, that gave the audience feelings they weren’t sure they were supposed to enjoy. These are both films about the two-headed monster of exploitation and entertainment.

That strategy is evident in the subjects Luhrmann chooses to focus on, and his 2022 Elvis biopic has more in common with Moulin Rouge in that regard than perhaps any other pairing from his filmography. Few filmmakers have dared to bend this visual/aural medium so far past its breaking point, poking directly at certain brain glands to get their secretions flowing, delivering audiences to new thresholds of wonder, joy, and outrage.

Generally I appreciate what Baz Luhrmann brings to the screen, even though I don’t particularly love any of his films, except Moulin Rouge (an achievement of cinematic spectacle so joyous and seductive that it remains easy for me to overlook its glaring problems).

I firmly resolved to make our relationship work, no matter what.” “…I intended to do whatever I had to to hold him, because if he ever sent me home, it would have meant not only that I’d been wrong in going to him, but that my parents had been wrong for having permitted it. “…I also had all of the physical attributes that Elvis liked, the fundamentals he could use in turning me into his ideal woman. I was more mature at sixteen than I was at fourteen, when he’d met me, not only because I’d gone through the normal growing period, but also because I’d experienced the pain of living without him for those two years. I think he was attracted by the fact that I had a normal, stable childhood, and that I was very responsible, having helped my parents raise my younger brothers and sister. “In truth, I was as mystified as my parents were about why Elvis wanted me to come and live with him. In fact, he couldn’t live without me, he said, intimating that one day we’d marry… Declaring his intentions honorable, he swore that he loved and needed and respected me.

He said I’d always be chaperoned and that he’d care for me in every way. Elvis promised to enroll me in a good Catholic school - he’d choose it himself - and make sure I graduated. “Drawing on all of his charm, Elvis assured my father that if I was permitted to move to Memphis, I wouldn’t live with him at Graceland but with his daddy, Vernon and his wife, Dee.

Elvis priscilla and me