Priscilla

 

Director Sofia Coppola

Cailee Spaeny with Best Actress prize from Venice

Elvis and Priscilla

Coppola on the set with Spaeny and Jacob Elordi

Sofia Coppola with Priscilla Presley

PRISCILLA               B+                                                                                                             USA  Italy  (113 mi)  2023  d: Sofia Coppola

I wanted to write about love and precious, wonderful moments and ones filled with grief and disappointments, about a man’s triumphs and defeats, much of it with a child-woman at his side, feeling and experiencing his pain and joys as if they were one.

—Priscilla Presley, from the epilogue of Elvis and Me, 1985

Sofia Coppola is an acquired taste, and not everyone gets her, including yours truly, where her career has largely been viewed as a series of hits or misses, with Lost in Translation (2002), Somewhere (2010), and now this film remaining the most successful examples of her highly personalized, semi-autobiographical style.  Yet do we really need another Elvis story, coming so soon after Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS (2022)?  Probably not, but with each of these directors you’re likely to get a mystifyingly unique take on a familiar subject.  Having grown up in the era of Elvis, seeing him plastered on magazine covers, he was the Hollywood matinee idol in the music world, yet his celebrity status was elevated beyond comprehension.  And that’s where Coppola comes in, as that’s a world she not only knows but is intimately familiar with in ways the rest of us aren’t.  So perhaps she’s as good as anyone to guide us through this journey.  The beauty of this film is it’s not really about Elvis, who is a gargantuan force, obviously, but purely secondary, as the entire film, literally every moment, is seen through the young and impressionable eyes of Priscilla, who remains starstruck by the powerful presence and superstar power of a man who is ten years older, already known as the King, an icon in the music industry, one of the most popular and influential artists of the 20th century, where his popularity was unprecedented, providing an almost fairy tale existence of wealth beyond her wildest dreams, where this becomes a Beauty and the Beast saga.  Unlike Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006), which was dripping with artificiality, this is a fairly realistic but minimalist portrayal, providing an exclusive look at what went on behind the scenes, confining much of the story to the bedroom, living room, and other private quarters, where so much of it takes place in the dark, shutting out the outside world, which is a fitting metaphor for the cloistered isolation of fame, where her suffocating marriage is viewed as a gilded cage, becoming something of a metaphorical prison.  Adapted from Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me (co-written with Sandra Harmon), she is listed as an executive producer, though the film does not have the support of the rest of Presley’s family, which denied the rights to any of his music, though early in the film an instrumental version of “Love Me Tender” can be heard.  Nonetheless, at the Venice Film Festival premiere, Priscilla was reduced to tears while the film received a 7-minute standing ovation.  Coppola simply doesn’t make films like anybody else, where each is a unique experience, giving viewers an opportunity to experience the familiar with a new awareness, as this is a much different perspective on both Elvis and Priscilla, providing an intimate and unflinching human portrait, recalling another famous figure in Pablo Larraín’s Jackie (2016), yet Coppola’s restrained and thoroughly impressionable style can be confounding to viewers who expect a coherent storyline, or a recognizable biographical timeline, where this is a quieter and more understated character study that is essentially a love story, with a killer soundtrack that couldn’t be more mesmerizing, providing a poetic, internalized narrative, while the personalized nature of the subject matter is unmistakable. 

While Lisa Marie Presley (who died from a heart attack earlier this year), the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, praised the Baz Luhrmann film that earned close to $300 million dollars worldwide, which explored the relationship between Elvis and his longtime manager Colonel Tom Parker, she had nothing but scorn for Coppola’s script, revealed in exchanged emails with the director, claiming “My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative.  As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character.  I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father.  I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?”  However she died before ever seeing the film, though it was not likely to change her view, as she was the sole executor of the Presley estate and extremely protective of her father’s legacy.  Priscilla Presley, on the other hand, was free to express her own life without any restrictions or limitations, and praised Coppola’s film for its realism.  Her book was actually dedicated to Lisa Marie, and was a #1 New York Times bestseller, yet the content of the film that Lisa Marie found so objectionable originated in her mother’s autobiographical book, as there’s nothing fictitiously added in Coppola’s version that’s not found in the book.  One unmistakable connection exists between Lisa Marie Presley and Sofia Coppola, as they are both daughters of famous celebrities.  All of that is a curious backdrop to the film, where what’s perhaps the most surprising is the age of Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) when she first met Elvis (Jacob Elordi) at a party, as she was only 14, and in 9th grade, while he was the biggest rock star in the world, with Elvis acknowledging “Why, you’re just a baby.”  How do you discreetly address the rock ‘n’ roll dilemma of grown men romancing young school girls?  Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, the Grateful Dead, and dozens of others regularly performed the sexist blues standard “Good Morning Little School Girl” and no one blinked an eye.   When Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year old cousin, it caused an uproar, but he continued recording well into his 70’s.  While this is an unsettling reminder of how often “little school girls” are on the periphery of pop music, a troublesome aspect of the male-dominated music industry, Coppola’s film doesn’t shy away from it, with Presley even seen performing Lewis’s signature number Jerry Lee Lewis -Whole Lotta Shakin Going On (Live 1964) YouTube (7:02) at a party, but she also doesn’t moralize over what was obviously a more accepted practice at the time.  Instead she chooses a different way to present the story, where it all unfolds like a dream, with inescapable realities that suggest problematic behavior, but others have gone down that same road as Elvis who died at the age of 42 after struggling with a decades-long substance abuse problem, which worsened in the years leading up to his death, where celebrity status leads to pills, drugs, or alcohol, and a fractured reality, where the history of rock ‘n’ roll is littered with the dead bodies of male and female legends who died before their time.

Set in 1959 near a U.S. military base in Germany, Elvis was drafted into the Army near the peak of his fame, while Priscilla’s stepfather was a career officer, U.S. Air Force Captain Beaulieu (Ari Cohen).  Having grown up in Texas, when we first meet Priscilla she is an overly shy yet pretty girl who is used to being unsettled, unhappily moving from base to base every few years, now finding herself on the other side of the world, much like Coppola moving from movie set to movie set during her childhood, going to different schools in different towns, attending kindergarten in the Philippines during the extended shooting of APOCALYPSE NOW (1979).  While sitting in a local diner catering to American military families, listening to Frankie Avalon’s “Venus,” Frankie Avalon - Venus (1959) 4K YouTube (2:25), she is approached by an Air Force serviceman who asked if she liked Elvis Presley, as he and his wife would be attending a Presley party at his home this weekend and asked if she’d like to come along, assuring her family that he’d be her chaperone.  This simple gesture started it all, literally plucked from obscurity, finding it hard to believe she’d make any kind of impression on a man so famous, but he’s immediately taken by her beauty and innocence, asking a lot of questions about what kind of music the kids back home listen to these days, sharing a first kiss, where she is positively enthralled he actually “liked” her and wanted to see her again.  Unable to concentrate in school the next day, Coppola’s impeccable musical choice is Tommy James and the Shondells - Crimson & Clover - YouTube (3:25), with love blossoming in the air (“Now I don’t hardly know her, but I think I could love her”), as Priscilla is seen with a slight smile on her face as she gracefully walks through the high school corridor as if on a cloud.  And the dream has begun.  According to Priscilla during a Venice Film Festival press conference, “Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother—which he never ever got over.  And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him.  That was really our connection.”  After regularly seeing each other, developing more than an infatuation, though always playing a passive, subordinate role, she’s positively heartbroken when his tour of duty is over and he returns to the States, as despite his many promises, she doesn’t hear from him again in years, thinking he’s forgotten all about her while she follows his budding movie career in all the magazines, including the much publicized affairs with his female costars.  Then suddenly out of the blue, he calls and wants her to visit his Memphis estate in Graceland, sending her airfare, welcomed by his friends and business associates, where the luxuriousness of the massive estate is hard to even imagine, but they take a side detour to Las Vegas where he introduces her to his prescription pills, amphetamines (Dexedrine) and barbiturates (Placidyls), uppers and downers that he initially stole from his mother (who was trying to lose weight) when he was in high school, the same lethal combination that led to the substance abuse problems of country singer Johnny Cash, which is something he regularly utilizes to get through the punishing work schedule arranged by his manager, Colonel Tom Parker (who is never shown onscreen).  When she returns back from her visit, she looks like a ghost of her former self, sending red flags to her parents, but Elvis convinces them to allow her to live with his family and staff at Graceland, while promising her parents she will enroll in Catholic school to complete her senior year, where she becomes an object of fascination to the other students.   

Incredulously, Priscilla’s drug use continues, taking a pill each morning before school, which may help get her through the day, but her concentration and mental focus is lost in the fog, leaving her scraping by just trying to graduate, resorting to unethical means (cheating) to do so, while the unorthodox nature of her relationship stands out, with a domineering partner who has an overcontrolling nature and a vicious temper problem, as Priscilla wasn’t allowed to work or have outside interests, but was required to be at home when he “needed” her, even as he was away for weeks or months at a time.  Elvis picked out her wardrobe, make-up, and hairstyle, refusing to allow her input, actually threatening to send her back to her parents when she disagreed, reducing her to tears, even doing her packing before relenting and reminding her how lucky she was to be with him, as any woman in America would love to be in her place.  Part of his celebrity mystique is women threw themselves at him, sent him love letters, and willingly offered themselves in the wild chance that he might agree.  While Elvis projected himself as a sex symbol and free spirit, he was extraordinarily conservative, believing the male was the stronger sex and that women needed to know their place, insisting that she needed to remain faithful to him even while he engaged in multiple affairs.  He was obsessed with firearms and loved to take target practice on the premises, providing Priscilla with a matching pistol for each dress.  What’s most evident is that Elvis was a grown-up kid, enjoying playing pranks, roughhousing, and hanging out with the guys, surrounding himself with a circle of friends who showed blind allegiance (his all-male entourage was nicknamed the Memphis Mafia), where he was always allowed to get his way, growing furious with her if she showed any signs of resistance, while denying all rumors of sexual romances with other movie stars he worked with, especially Ann Margaret, despite the saturated headlines in all the magazines and newspapers.  To his credit, he could be very persuasive, where his sweet talk could be utterly charming, and she could fall under his spell, with the euphoria of their marriage evoking a musical reference to the outlaw lovers in Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973), Badlands • Gassenhauer • Carl Orff YouTube (2:50).  While much of this sounds manipulative and controlling, there can be no doubt that they also loved each other, where the film follows the dozen or so years they spent together, told with an extraordinary tenderness, paying closer attention to the various stages of female adolescence and young adulthood, which is what attracted Coppola to the material, as this mirrors her own transition into womanhood.  Coppola’s marriage dissolved during the making of Lost in Translation, while the inevitable train wreck of Priscilla’s marital purgatory also comes to an end, where her boxed-in powerlessness is replaced by separate lives and a world of new opportunities, moving to Los Angeles in her late twenties to celebrate her newly discovered independence, finally empowered to act on her own, beautifully expressed by Santana’s Oye Como Va YouTube (4:17) with the palm trees lining the roadway, yet what stands out is the resolve it took to leave such a powerful man who completely transformed her life.  Cailee Spaeny is onscreen in nearly every shot, awarded the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival, where her mostly subdued and understated performance resonates, especially when compared to the more volatile emotional mix that was Elvis, yet the coup de grâce is the finale, where the inspired choice is Dolly Parton’s transcendent vision, Dolly Parton - I Will Always Love You (Official Audio) YouTube (2:55), supposedly the song Elvis sang to Priscilla after the completion of their divorce, leaving viewers utterly transfixed by the experience.

Mystery Train

 

Director Jim Jarmusch

Jarmusch with Joe Strummer (left)

Actor Masatoshi Nagase

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MYSTERY TRAIN          B                                                                                                       USA  Japan  (113 mi)  1989  d:  Jim Jarmusch

A film to live in. A film in which I can spend evenings and afternoons smoking, reading and sleeping. I’ve tried a hundred times to remake a Jarmusch tracking shot, I’ve never gotten close. They move at a speed that belongs only to him. Jarmusch is the metronome of a precious melancholy.                                                                                                                                 —French filmmaker Christophe Honoré on Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, listed at #9 of his Criterion Top Ten films, Christophe Honoré’s Top 10

Filmed in Memphis during the summer of 1988, Jarmusch mixes three interconnected stories depicting the city more as an idea than an actual place, viewed through an outsider’s lens, with two young Japanese tourists making a pilgrimage from Yokohama, viewing the city as a rock ‘n’ roll Mecca, a grounded Italian traveler visits from Rome to collect the dead remains of her husband and return him back to Italy, but a flight delay leaves her stranded overnight, while the third tracks a trio of friends as they make their way through a boozy night of misadventure, all connected by the music of Elvis Presley, a few other early rockers, and a bluesy guitar soundtrack written by John Lurie.  Much of this is viewed through miscommunication and alienation, offering racial diversity in the lead characters, where strangers in a foreign land view America with a mixture of weird fascination and curious befuddlement, as a central theme is just how much is lost in translation, ostensibly a film about loneliness, missed opportunities, and a longing for connection, with some feeling deceived by the America they find, including some that live there all their lives.  Unlike most filmmakers, Jarmusch’s primary interest is in the soon-to-be-demolished, rundown part of town, where they had to clear hookers from the streets each night before filming, according to Linn Sitler, the city’s former film commissioner, suggesting Jarmusch was one of the first to express an interest in filming there.  Much of the film takes place at the corner of South Main and what was then Calhoun (now G.E. Patterson), not exactly an area the city’s officials wanted showcased, a blighted landscape of vacant lots, boarded-up storefronts, broken down movie theaters, cheap rundown hotels, all-night diners, lone liquor stores, and dimly lit dive bars, all crumbling signs of an empty and abandoned ghost town, with little sign of street traffic or pedestrians, yet Jarmusch found a distinct character there, including clever graffiti on the walls paying homage to Stax records (which according to Jarmusch was already there).  It has now been cleaned up and is the most filmed area of the city, placing a plaque in the film’s honor, as it helped revitalize the neighborhood.  Near the opening, we see two Japanese tourists arrive in Memphis, Mitzuko (Yûki Kudô), an Elvis enthusiast, and Jun (Masatoshi Nagase), hair slicked back like the 50’s, preferring Carl Perkins, who is later seen gazing out the hotel window and uttering, “It feels cool to be in Memphis.”  This follows a long walk from the train station through the seedy neighborhoods lugging their bright red suitcase balanced on a stick they carry on each end, not encumbered by distances, obviously quite comfortable walking for hours, literally stumbling upon the Sun Records studio founded by Sam Phillips, little more than a hole-in-the-wall establishment, yet the home of so much early rock ‘n’ roll history that originated there, as Phillips launched the career of Elvis Presley in 1954, while producing the recordings of Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Howlin’ Wolf as well.  Their tour of the studio, however, is a complete waste of time, as the guide races through the material to the point of complete incomprehension, speaking almost no English, knowing exactly what they knew going in as they did going out.  Undaunted, they continue on their journey afterwards, marked by a continuous tracking shot through the city streets set to a bluesy theme, finally resting in front of a statue to Elvis, each arguing over who is their favorite rocker. 

As night creeps in, they find a fleabag hotel known as the Arcade, manned at the desk by R&B legend Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as the manager in his flame red suit and Spike Lee’s younger brother Cinqué Lee as the bellhop, in faded purple uniform and cap, the spitting image of Tony Revolori, the Lobby Boy in the Wes Anderson comic satire The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).  The room has a giant portrait of Elvis hovering over the bed, no TV, which is an obvious disappointment, with Mitzuko tending to her Elvis scrapbook that finds traces of Elvis in Madonna, the Buddha, and even the Statue of Liberty.  Mitzuko is overly friendly with a bubbly personality, while Jun is stoic and near silent, rarely changing the expression on his face, identified throughout by a near magical choreography of his lighter, with Mitzuko at one point using her feet to show her lighter dexterity, but both are tuned into their own wavelength.  When a gunshot is clearly heard, neither one seems surprised or particularly affected, though Mitzuko asks if what she heard was a gun?  Jun answers unenthusiastically, “Probably.  This is America.”  Both are completely unphased, heading out the next morning to see Graceland.  Next we see a distraught young Italian woman at the airport, Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi), having to absurdly sign a dozen documents to transport her recently deceased husband’s body back to Italy, calling home to report a delay in her flight, leaving her free time on her hands, wandering through the same city streets we saw earlier, buying a newspaper, which is itself an ordeal, with the vendor pushing every available magazine, eventually settling in at the Arcade all-night diner.  Minding her own business, she’s immediately hit on by a stranger (Tom Noonan), offering an elongated story about discovering Elvis in Memphis purely by accident.  Unimpressed, she gives him money to go away, but runs into him on the street afterwards, looking around for a safe haven before taking refuge in the Arcade Hotel.  But just as she enters the lobby, another disgruntled woman is rushing out, the hyperactive Dee Dee (Elizabeth Bracco), where the collision knocks her down, with her magazines spilling all over the floor.  Eying up the situation, Luisa offers to share the room, as she doesn’t really want to be alone, which suits Dee Dee fine, more than happy to let Luisa pay, expecting to settle up in the room, which like the other one, has a giant portrait of Elvis.  While Dee Dee can’t shut up over her personal problems, talking nonstop about breaking up with her boyfriend, we are transported back to a similar point in time through the radio, with the voice of Tom Waits as the DJ talking the same rap and playing the exact same tune we heard earlier with the Japanese kids, a vintage Roy Orbison recording of “Domino,” The Teen Kings - Domino - YouTube (2:08).  With this understanding, Jarmusch has done a time synchronization, with other recurring events happening before as well, including the gunshot, which Luisa identifies as “maybe a .38,” while Dee Dee can’t exit this “dump” fast enough.  Once Dee Dee falls asleep, however, a very much awake Luisa has visions of Elvis Presley in the room literally talking to her, wearing a gold lamé jacket with slicked back hair, but once she frantically wakes up Dee Dee, the ghostly image disappears, grumpily turning back to sleep, while Luisa appears thunderstruck, unable to close her eyes all night long, seen hurriedly racing for the gate at the airport the next morning. 

The final sequence takes place in what appears to be a black neighborhood bar called Shades, with some guys playing pool, but an irate Johnny (British rocker Joe Strummer from The Clash, the only white guy in the joint, affectionately called Elvis for his retro hair style) is upset over losing his job and his girlfriend all in the same day, having a drink with his friend Ed (Vondie Curtis-Hall), unleashing his troubles and wallowing in his collective miseries as we hear Otis Redding, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Rufus Thomas (who makes an earlier cameo appearance at the train station) playing on the jukebox, eventually pulling out a gun, causing instant commotion in this otherwise laid back atmosphere.  Calling him crazy, Ed calls his brother-in-law to come get this troublemaker, none other than Steve Buscemi as Charlie, arriving together with his friend Will (Rick Aviles), with Charlie voicing his concerns about the type of neighborhood, suggesting maybe he should wait in the car, but Will has to remind him that white people are allowed inside.  Johnny is a basket case, already loaded from drinking, so they decide to stop at a liquor store, getting a couple bottles, but when the cashier makes a racist remark to Will, Johnny shoots him, thinking he’s got it coming.   Not knowing what else to do, they drive around in Will’s truck all night drinking before finally arriving drunk and exhausted, looking for a room to remain invisible at the Arcade, given the most dilapidated room on the premises, where they simply drink themselves into a stupor.  Once again, we hear synchronized cues from earlier episodes, with the DJ playing familiar songs, including Elvis singing “Blue Moon,” Elvis Presley - Blue Moon - YouTube (2:41), only 19 when he recorded it.  This song connects with personal losses, experienced differently by Luisa, Dee Dee and Johnny, even by Mitzuko, who feels the need for an embrace.  By now we’ve figured out Dee Dee is Johnny’s lost girlfriend, and all three sequences are happening simultaneously, all of them staying at the Arcade for a single, fortuitous night, each viewing things for a differing perspective.  Filmed in a leisurely pace, with mood and atmosphere dominating any developing storyline, the characters are defined by their small eccentricities, like the lighter routine with Jun, or his habit of photographing hotel furniture, where their dreams of what Memphis would be kept getting smaller in their eyes, drearier and emptier than they imagined, where it’s the music that continually sustains their passion.  We’re never able to penetrate Luisa’s interior world, having just lost her husband, yet she’s incredibly kind and gracious to everyone she meets, including the tremendously wound-up Dee Dee, who is a handful.  The guy with a gun sequence reveals just what nitwits guys can be sometimes, overly concerned only about themselves, as if they’re all that matters in the world, paranoid about constantly eluding the police, even when they’re not being chased.  Linking all these sequences together are the two guys at the hotel desk, who perform their own deadpan routines, slightly different with each group of new customers, perhaps the closest thing to stability in the film, as they’re the only ones not in motion, not heading anywhere, but content to be where they are, developing a natural ease with one another.  In addition to musical motifs, other architectural landmarks reoccur as well, sprinkled throughout the film, yet in a seemingly aimless pattern, having no real rhyme or reason.  As in all Jarmusch films, the dialogue is sparse, scenes are filled with wry melancholic silences, while Robby Müller’s camera mostly remains stationary, though interestingly the film was shot in color, always lighthearted and amusing, feeling at times like a musical travelogue, featuring some extraordinary cuts of music, bookended by Elvis Presley and Junior Parker versions of the entitled song, becoming a love letter to the city of Memphis, using just a few stragglers passing through to offer just a taste of the city’s rich cultural traditions.