‘Elvis Presley: The Searcher’ Ignores The Ugly Details In An Attempt To Redeem The King’s Legacy [Review]

There’s only one Elvis. A titanic figure, who, for America’s formative pop culture years, was the biggest and most influential star in the world — bringing rock n roll to the masses and crooning his way through dozens of Hollywood hits. He was, in many respects, the first superstar, blazing a dangerous and lonely trail to the top, where he was vulnerable and isolated. Even today he is Elvis, not Elvis Presley, a persona that grew out of personhood and into the mythology of America.

How, then, do you make a movie about such a legend? How do you whittle down the facts of such a life into something consumable? How do you make sense of his rise and his stardom and his tragedy? The answer, according to Thom Zimny’s documentary “Elvis Presley: The Searcher,” is that you strive to capture the magnetism that radiated from Elvis, and you hope the rest comes along naturally. Unfortunately, for all the joys woven into Zimny’s film, it doesn’t ever feel like the seminal Elvis doc that it wants to be, and even for those viewers without a deep knowledge of The King, nothing feels particularly new or revelatory.

‘The Searcher’ is told in two parts: Elvis on his way to stardom and Elvis fighting to regain his status after returning from his U.S. Army deployment. Still, “The Searcher” is only a little over three hours, which means it packs a lot in very quickly. Elvis was born and raised poor in Tupelo, Mississippi, and got his first taste of music from church. As a teen, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where his taste and experience with music thrived — nourished in part in the Black blues clubs that he frequently visited.

Told from the voices of musical legends like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, his ex-wife Priscilla Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore, childhood friends and historians, ‘The Searcher’ is eager to lay out Elvis’ varied influences, and it is quick to note that he brought many of these genres to the forefront of American culture. What Zimny’s film is uneager to do is delve into what it means for blues and gospel and all the other genres of Black music that Elvis played, to have been made famous by a white man. Instead, Zimny nods to the fact that Elvis kicked down the door and allowed everyone else to follow — a perspective that allows the obvious cultural appropriation to go unexamined.

This simplicity plagues ‘The Searcher.’ Zimny’s film is easily watchable and the wealth of footage is impressive, but it’s hard not to feel like something is missing almost constantly. As Elvis explodes from Memphis to the national stage, gets pulled into the perilous orbit of Colonel Tom Parker and becomes a movie star, the film tracks his every move but somehow fails to examine the world or the country around him. When, finally, the Civil Rights era begins to gain steam, ‘The Searcher’ takes cursory stabs at it, which feels like a disservice. Elvis, for all his colossal fame, did not exist in a vacuum. He was a product of his time — a man born at the exact right time, who doggedly threw himself and his talents into everything he did until he was on top of every chart in America. What good does it do, then, to ignore the world around him? To ignore the people around him — like Colonel Parker, or even Priscilla Presley, who is one of the most prominent voices in the film.

Structurally, the film is also underwhelming. Presumably, to ground the film, Zimny uses Elvis’ 1968 TV special as a sort of pivot point, constantly returning to his performance and the experiences of those who worked with him on the set. Why exactly ‘The Searcher’ hinges upon this performance never really becomes clear, but it is one of the few times in the film where scenes are constructed. For the most part, the rest of the film — which is told by the likes of Petty and Springsteen and a wealth of others who are heard but never seen — is told in fits and spurts, in feelings that are explained but never felt. Not to mention that the film is rarely tethered to chronology and when it skips a year or three, there is no indication.

Worst of all, though, is how hard ‘The Searcher’ works to redeem Elvis’ legacy. Gone are the ugly, glaring details of Elvis’ life — save for the drugs, which are unavoidable — and gone is any culpability he had in his troubles or his marred personal relationships. Zimny’s film, more or less, is an act of hagiography. And certainly, for some — for fans of Elvis or even those who have tangentially enjoyed his music — ‘The Searcher’ will be a fulfilling dive into the life and music of The King. But for those looking for something more, for something interested in fleshing out the complex and potentially ugly life of a legend, ‘The Searcher’ likely isn’t worth being “a watcher.” [D+]