Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Is an Exhilarating, Maddening Spectacle--But One Made With Love

Baz Luhrmann’s movies—even the great ones, like his 1996 Shakespeare-via-Tiger Beat romance Romeo + Juliet, or The Great Gatsby, from 2013, a fringed shimmy of decadence and loneliness—are loathed by many for what they see as the director’s garishness, his adoration of spectacle, his penchant for headache-inducing, mincemeat-and-glitter editing. But in 2022, in a culture…