At its outset, Eugene Jarecki’s The King presents two entwined subjects that have been exhaustively covered. One is the lasting meaning of Elvis Presley as the dominant mythological figure of 20th-century America, from his impact on socially repressed sexual expression to his controversial status as the poster boy for white appropriation of black culture. The other topic concerns the rise of Donald Trump as the culmination of several decades of the American façade of civility and dignity slipping until it finally sloughed off the true, grim face of the nation’s seedy self. The former has been the topic of intense discussion and debate for longer than most people have been alive, while the latter has occupied nearly every waking second of discourse these last two years, which feel like the longest in modern history.
To link these distinct threads of cultural criticism would require the kind of associative, free-range essayistic approach of, say, Jean-Luc Godard, but Jarecki approaches the film with a calm gaze, using montage only to make the most basic of observations about his topics. The film centers on a road trip taken in Elvis’s 1963 Rolls Royce, mostly around the areas where the artist was born and raised. As talking-head interviews lay out the King’s impoverished upbringing in a mostly black neighborhood in Tupelo, Mississippi, present-day footage from the place shows how little has changed. As Jarecki rolls through a neighborhood in a car several times more expensive than any house there, one can see that the demographics are still overwhelmingly poor and black, and even the white owners of Elvis’s childhood home mention that they never knew of its significance until recently. Speaking with the family inside, Jarecki asks what the American Dream means to them, and the matriarch sidesteps his definition of material comfort from hard work to argue for love and happiness, though she admits she and the people around her have as little of that as they do money.
Scenes of the dilapidated areas of Tupelo and, later, Memphis coincide with fierce debates by interview subjects over whether Elvis simply profited off the black culture he gleaned from the neighborhoods where he grew up. Pundit Van Jones does not mince words when he talks of Elvis, mentioning how his father grew up in Memphis loathing the artist for gaining so much and giving none of it back to the communities that influenced him. Jones argues passionately that Elvis appropriated soul and black gospel, while interviews with “The Wire” scribe David Simon find him just as stridently defending the King by pointing to a cross-racial panoply of influences. Chuck D, who once so memorably rapped “Elvis was a hero to most/ But he never meant shit to me,” offers a third, more nuanced take, one that delineates the nature of an artist developing his or her voice by looking to earlier art from the larger commercial apparatus that determines which images will sell on the market. Regardless of their feelings on Elvis, nearly all the interviewees agree to disparage Presley’s manager, Col. Parker, as a manipulative, incompetent fraud, one who shaped Elvis’s career in disastrous ways.
The lack of actual conversation between any of these interviewees turns much of the film into a relay of call-and-response opinions backed by the most obvious touchstones of Elvis’s life: his first TV appearances, his move into film acting, army enlistment, etc. Things quickly devolve into a standard biography, merely regurgitating facts about the highs and lows of Elvis’s professional accomplishments over video clips that have been replayed endless times. There’s even less for the film to use when it comes to its Trumpian critique, lacking even the guiding voice of interview subjects beyond the occasional comment regarding the general, vague State of Things. Only Alec Baldwin, unctuous as ever as he rides around in Elvis’s car and sneers at fans who gather around him, says much in the way of a direct commentary. Even then, Baldwin, filmed before the 2016 election, can only pause to comment on the current situation to scoff that Trump cannot possibly win. All the while, Jarecki uses montages of Elvis’s later years, his bloated and incoherent twilight in Vegas, to link to the Trump era, suggesting that the boomer generation, if not America as a whole, has now entered a twilight of obesity, opioid addiction and resentment barely wrapped in a costume of distracting flash and dazzle.
This is a simplistic thesis that barely excuses the need to rehash the desiccated, vulture-picked remains of Elvis Presley’s corpse, but it’s a testament to the quality of interviews that Jarecki gets that this does not feel like a total waste of time. Jones’s seething hatred for Elvis is juxtaposed with the fanboyish delight of Ethan Hawke, who spits factoids about the artist like an excited child. Ashton Kutcher offers unexpectedly somber, mature reflections on the dangers of fame, noting how he himself feels that his fame outstripped his talent, pausing in the middle of this humble confession as a group of people drive by and scream his name in delight. And for all the debate over Elvis, there are still glimpses of lingering worship that offer reminders of the enduring pull of the man, as when singer-songwriter John Hiatt gets in the backseat of the Rolls Royce and immediately bursts into tears at the thought of being in a space once occupied by his idol. Such moments offer more insight into the legacy of Elvis than Jarecki’s ham-fisted attempt to filter the artist through the lens of Trump, and for a brief moment one is able to forget how distended and directionless this documentary is.
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