The King is alive: "Baz Luhrmann's EPiC"

Elvis Presley is just about the only pop star in cinemas right now who isn't having a quote-unquote moment. Baz Luhrmann's characteristically brash EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert returns us to a Presley at his post-'68 Comeback Special peak: relatively slender, visibly re-energised, sitting on top (or close to the top) of the showbusiness tree. (His moments were yet to come.) Stitched together from footage Luhrmann dug up while researching his Elvis biopic - outtakes from 1970's Elvis: That's the Way It Is and 1972's Elvis on Tour, archiving the star's Vegas residency in rich Metrocolor textures - the results merge two recent trends in music documentary. As per the title, it's first and foremost a concert movie, an "event", a designation that enables our beloved exhibitors to charge us double for the privilege of attending: not quite Ticketmaster-level gouging, admittedly, but a bit galling when you're sat in the same seats you'd sit in for any common-or-garden fillum, watching a performer who's been dead for the better part of fifty years. It's also another chance to hear a subject in his own words, and here EPiC starts to run in parallel with Man on the Run. Much as that film felt obliged to open with a brief Beatles recap, so too Luhrmann begins with a potted Presley history, a "previously on Elvis": the hips, the hits, the army, the movies (which appear every bit as trivial and silly in 2026 as they would have done in 1966). Having provided some context for newbies, the director resets the stage and proceeds to the night's main event. Ladies and gentlemen, all rise for the King.

Even before this Presley breaks into an ad hoc rec-room performance of "Yesterday" (a song choice that carries a poignant charge, given how some felt the Beatles had blown Elvis away), early Seventies Elvis is shown to have much in common with post-Beatles McCartney: mired in an increasingly unhappy contractual situation, yet determined to return to doing the thing he loves most after the distractions of the previous decade. The loveliest footage EPiC returns to us is that of Elvis in rehearsal, clad in a series of extraordinary shirts: after personally greeting band, backing singers and onlooking camera crew, he starts to exercise that voice, sometimes making arrangements in the manner of a Brian Wilson, often plain goofing off. Luhrmann must have known he was onto something magical here, because the rehearsal sequences are the first time this manic, antic assemblage takes a breath and appears to relax into its archive. This Elvis - unlike, say, Austin Butler's pouting pretty boy or Jacob Elordi's brooder - is funny, courteous and charming; personality-wise, he's the Elvis Nicolas Cage might have played in the immediate wake of Honeymoon in Vegas. The gig footage, which will do little to dissuade those who insist Seventies Elvis is the best Elvis, comes to seem like an extension of the interview footage: in both, a more rounded and seasoned version of the lean, thrusting whippersnapper Elvis presented as in the 1950s figures out how best to express himself, what works for him and what doesn't. One abiding memory of EPiC: watching Elvis stamping his own name - in fifteen-foot high, vibrantly sparkling rhinestone - on any number of songs previously recorded by other artists: "Yesterday", yes, but also "Something", "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". At this point, every song had the potential to be an Elvis song; those savvy arrangements repurposed a whole suite of tunes into jumpsuits he could effortlessly slip inside. Part of you wants to shout requests for the era's other popular standards at the screen: do "Son of My Father", Elvis! Try "Mama Weer All Crazee Now"!

Just as a stage presence, this Elvis really is box-office and VFM: simultaneously singer, stand-up, screen idol and stripper-in-waiting, forever poised to give the yelping ladies in the front row just what they've come for. (The only trouble with Seventies Elvis, from a contemporary perspective, is that he is very Seventies; the gaudy blue-and-yellow leisure suit he wears to perform "Burning Love" in rehearsals is so Dave Nice the singer should have been shot from the hairline up.) Luhrmann, ever the evangelist for all things camp and chintzy, revels in it; his creative choices are generally sound, though a few missteps reveal themselves. After the hellzapoppin first half - most of the hits, in enveloping Dolby surround - the second half leans heavily into Goddy Elvis and Gospel Elvis, which can only ever be a matter of personal taste. And Luhrmann messes up the ending: just when you think you've finally got through a 21st century music doc without encountering Bono, up the little fella pops to read us an Elvis poem. Amid the dazzling bright lights, though, the director also catches pools of darkness and signs of Elvises to come. A glimpse of Colonel Tom Parker cues a wry montage set to "(You're the) Devil in Disguise"; an end credits card points out that Elvis never toured outside North America. (Imagine having a live act like this on your books and not sending him overseas - but then touring doubtless entails some loss of control.) The star's vacillating weight is made only more conspicuous by Luhrmann's tendency to slap disparate performances of the same song together: a chorus started by Seraphim Elvis can be finished by (what looks like) Freddie Starr's Elvis. And every now and again, one or more of these cameras catches Elvis lapsing into something like self-parody, where he doesn't seem to be trying, where it's just another song in another show in another run. For the most part, though, EPiC honours its subject's unmatchable charisma and stagecraft. It's a fan's film, possessed of a fervour and intensity that means to convert agnostics into admirers. Yet it does more than anything I've seen for quite some while - including Luhrmann's own biopic - to bring Elvis back to life before our eyes. There is, finally, no acceptable stand-in or substitute for the real deal.

Baz Luhrmann's EPiC is now showing in cinemas nationwide.