Elvis Is Still “The King”
The main thing about Eugene Jarecki‘s The King — released this Friday — is that it’s less of a “rise and fall of Elvis†film than a meditative road-trip essay about the cultural decline of the U.S. of A. over the last…oh, call it 60 years. But with doses of music and feeling and irony and currents of straight talk. It’s a stirring musical sermon. How did we get here? Then vs. now. The bloat, the denial, the loathing…a nation arguably more at war with itself than at any time since the Civil War. Paul Simon rewrite: “We’re empty and aching and don’t know why.†Jeff Wells explains: ‘Well, actually we do.’
