“Elvis” has re-entered the building.
The kaleidoscopic biography of Baz Luhrmann, which was a smash hit when it opened in theaters last summer (and will be back in theaters starting this weekend), garnered eight Oscar nominations on Tuesday, including Best Picture and Best Actor for the amazing transformation of Austin Butler into The King. It also earned Catherine Martin, Luhrmann’s wife and creative collaborator, three nominations: Best Picture (she was a producer), Costume Design, and Production Design (a nod shared with Karen Murphy and Bev Dunn). That’s a lot of shaking going on.
“I’m so excited for my team because I feel like I’m the cheerleader,” Martin said Tuesday morning, calling from Paris. “There are so many people who work with me to achieve what you see on screen. And I know you’re very excited about the nomination. That makes me super happy. And I’m also thrilled to be in the company of incredible women: Karen Murphy, my co-producing designer, Bev Dunn my decorator, but also producing Gail Berman.”
But there is one nomination Luhrmann and Martin “jumped out of their seat” for: Mandy Walker’s nomination for cinematography. This is the third time a female director of photography has been nominated.
“We were screaming and crying,” Martin said. “It is so well deserved. She is an extraordinary artist and an extraordinary person and human being. This movie is brilliantly shot, very inventive. I couldn’t be more excited.”
And, of course, Luhrmann is excited about Butler’s nomination for a role he wasn’t sure anyone could play.
“I thought I would never find someone who could play Elvis, so I will never have to do the movie,” Luhrmann said. “Because it is not a job of impersonation. You have to be able to do the physical, the vocal, but also find the Elvis within. When Priscilla wrote that note after seeing the movie and said, ‘I just don’t understand how she could know the moments that no one saw, how could she understand the anger and loneliness? How could I understand the silences that Elvis took?’ I think that’s probably the miracle of acting, that she lived it for so long, that she was able to merge his soul with Elvis. He is a humanity. Everybody wants to hug that guy on screen and save him.”
Just as impressive as the Oscars love for “Elvis” was the fact that it drew people into the movies, without being part of a giant franchise or leaning on any pre-existing intellectual property. Luhrmann said the entire team brought “the spirit of Elvis” to the effort.
“We, in the spirit of Elvis, have to show that we can bring older and younger audiences back to the theater,” he said. “And whatever way to go for this movie, he absolutely did it.”
But what the filmmaker is really interested in is how the movie will play out in a decade, particularly because there were a lot of 16-year-old girls who loved the movie but identify with “Elvis as this person they’ve never met.”
“I want to see where they are in 10 years and what their reaction is then. It’s really interesting with my films, what happens in 10 years,” said Luhrmann. But this one interests me especially. The absolute gratification to everyone who gave so much is that we brought audiences of all kinds, of all backgrounds and all ages, to the theater, and honestly, that’s what Elvis was. He was a uniter. I think that’s the meaning of the whole trip.”
