Review: ‘The King’ Chases the American Dream and Elvis

Wildly ambitious, thoroughly entertaining and embellished with some snaky moves, Eugene Jarecki’s documentary “The King” is a lot like its nominal subject, Elvis Presley. In part, it tells the familiar story of the poor little boy who became a king. But Jarecki has a second, larger and more complicated story he wants to address, too: that of the United States. Tying one man’s body to the body politic, he seeks to turn Presley’s life — from ravishing, thrilling youth to ravaging, putrefying fame — into the story of the country, an arc that takes the documentary from Graceland to Trumpland.

Why Elvis? For Jarecki, the answer seems to be, why not? Mostly, though, there is the 1963 Rolls-Royce Phantom V, which came into Jarecki’s sights a few years back and serves as both the documentary’s roving stage and silent co-star. It’s a silver beast: huge, cumbersome-looking and temperamental. (It breaks down.) Rigged with cameras, it has to be among the more expensive picture cars in the history of cinema, having been bought by the movie’s production company in 2014 for almost $400,000.

Jarecki, who is regularly seen and heard throughout the movie, never goes into how he got behind the wheel of this pricey collector’s item (now resold), which is too bad because it provokes your curiosity. (I had to ask the publicist.) He just invites you to hop in while he steers you cross-country, following ribbons of road and a time line that shifts from the past to the present and back again. The details of some of that history are as familiar as a fairy tale, like the shotgun shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, where Presley was born on Jan. 8, 1935.

He was the only surviving child of his beloved mother, Gladys, and his father, Vernon, who three years later was in prison for check forgery, just one of the many milestones that Jarecki passes as he quickly begins complicating his story. Working with a team of editors, he introduces Presley, the man and the myth, using an onslaught of archival images and sounds. In interviews and in early television appearances (hello, Ed Sullivan), the young Elvis rises to a mesmerizing, cacophonous chorus: “We want Elvis, we want Elvis!”

Jarecki complies, delivering Presley with the help of a large group of revolving guests that includes James Carville, who soon after slipping into the Rolls invokes Mike Tyson, another fallen god. Jarecki likes to visually embroider the dialogue, and as Carville speaks, the movie cuts to Tyson delivering a devastating blow in the ring. “Mike Tyson,” Carville says, “hit you so hard he changes the way you taste.” Then it’s back to Carville opining on Elvis in the Rolls: “America never tasted the same after he hit.”

This show-and-tell strategy is diverting — as are guests like Ethan Hawke — but “The King” is at its strongest when Jarecki uses his material to build an actual argument. That’s what happens when he enters a juicy virtual discussion about Presley, white supremacy, black heritage and cultural appropriation that features Van Jones, Chuck D and the TV auteur David Simon (“The Wire”), who are united through the editing. “It’s important to recognize,” Jones says, “that Elvis as hero does not rest comfortably in the mouths of all Americans.” Jarecki seems to let Chuck D and Simon do the talking for him. “Listen,” Simon says, “the entire American experience is cultural appropriation.”

Every documentary is also a chronicle of its own moment, and so it’s no surprise that throughout “The King” Jarecki restlessly looks at contemporary America as he tracks Presley’s path from Tupelo to Memphis, Nashville and beyond, and simultaneously heads toward Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and beyond. Jarecki’s weaving of past and present makes seamless sense — even if images of Tupelo today say more than his brief, rather opportunistic visit with a few residents — but at other times his searching feels like reaching. One of the most attractive things about Jarecki as a filmmaker, though, is that he’s comfortable letting you see him struggle. “What do you think I’m doing with this movie,” Jarecki asks as “The King” nears its midpoint. He’s riding shotgun, and Wayne Gerster, a crew member, is behind the wheel. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing with this movie,” Gerster gruffly replies. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing, that’s what’s scary.” He ventures a reasonable guess, offering that Jarecki is after “some comparison between — I hate to say ‘fall’ — but the rise and decline of Elvis with the rise and decline of America.” Gerster volunteers his own take on the country (he believes it’s stagnant), even as Jarecki listens and continues on his search.

He finds a great deal throughout “The King,” which finally proves more seductive than persuasive, particularly as Presley and Jarecki approach the finish and the screen turns into an imagistic, intellectual blur: Elvis falling, the twin towers burning, candidates rallying and Barney the purple dinosaur waving. It’s a chaotic end, but the journey is the destination in a movie that gives you plenty to think about and argue with, as it racks up the miles and people clamber in and out of both the Rolls and the movie. While most of the Presley experts Jarecki confers with are men (an unfortunate lapse), this otherwise generous, perceptive director, more than anything, clearly yearns to fit not only Elvis but also the whole wide world into his sweet ride.

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