Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com VANESSA KIEFER Editor-in-Chief eic@michigandaily.com ANGIE YU Business Manager business@michigan- daily.com EDITORIAL STAFF Brandon Cowit Managing Editor cowitb@michigandaily.com Tess Crowley Digital Managing Editor crowlete@michigandaily.com CONTACT INFORMATION The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is publishing weekly on Wednesdays for the Winter 2022 semester by students at the University of Michigan. One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional copies may be picked up at the Daily’s office for $2. If you would like a current copy of the paper mailed to you, please visit store. pub.umich.edu/michigan-daily-buy- this-edition to place your order. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts 2 — Wednesday, July 20, 2022 Newsroom Office hours: Sun.-Thurs. 11 a.m. - 2 a.m. 734-763-2459 opt.3 News Tips news@michigandaily.com Corrections corrections@michigandaily.com Letters to the Editor tothedaily@michigandaily.com or visit michigandaily.com/letters Photo Department photo@michigandaily.com Arts Section arts@michigandaily.com Editorial Page opinion@michigandaily.com Sports Section sports@michigandaily.com Magazine statement@michigandaily.com Advertising Phone: 734-418-4115 Department dailydisplay@gmail.com Lindsay Budin and Connor Earegood Managing Sports Editors sports@michigandaily.com Emilia Ferrante Managing Arts Editor arts@michigandaily.com Serena Shen and Claire Yang Managing Design Editors design@michigandaily.com Senior Layout Editor: Lys Goldman Sarah Boeke and Julianne Yoon Managing Photo Editors photo@michigandaily.com Julia Verklan Maloney Managing Statement Editor statement@michigandaily.com Abbie Gaies and Lizzie MacAdam Managing Copy Editors copydesk@michigandaily.com Matthew Bilik Managing Online Editor webteam@michigandaily.com Nithisha Kumar Managing Video Editor video@michigandaily.com Anchal Malh and Andy Nakamura Michigan in Color Editors michiganincolor@michigandaily.com Mishal Charania and Martina Zacker Audience Engagement Managing Editors socialmedia@michigandaily.com Akshara Koottala and Lola Yang Chair of Culture, Training, and Inclusion accessandinclusion@michigandaily.com Quin Zapoli Editorial Page Editor tothedaily@michigandaily.com Eli Friedman and Riley Hodder Managing News Editors news@michigandaily.com I love walking out of movie theaters, mainly when the movie feels like it has changed my life. I stand up, coming back into a body I’ve forgotten for the past two hours, and step down the stairs while the end music plays. The film’s atmosphere — a world of excitement and drama and loss, all arcing and sucked free of mundanity — is still thick in the air. I will never be closer to that world. I walk outside, look out at the world in the afterglow of the film, with everything it told me held inside my chest, and things look different. The feeling usually fades by the time I’m home, lasting until the next day at best. Never as long as I expected from a film that at first felt life-changing. I rewatched Pixar’s “Soul” recently, wherein Joe (Jamie Foxx, “Django Unchained”), an aspiring jazz musician, must help an unborn soul find her “spark” in life or die Read more at michigandaily.com When it comes to making a biopic, every production is going to take a different route. If you’re “Bohemian Rhapsody,” you’ll use the real-life voice of Freddie Mercury for songs played in the diegetic context of concerts or recordings. If you’re “Rocketman,” you treat the biopic more like a musical, with the life of Elton John framed around a series of his songs performed as elaborate musical numbers. And if you’re Baz Luhrmann (“The Great Gatsby”), a director known for his maximalist approach, directing a biopic about the life of Elvis Presley, well … you end up making it more like a fever dream. “Elvis” follows the titular Elvis Presley (Austin Butler, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) through his rise and fall (read: rise and death) as a musician through the eyes of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, “Finch”). It’s a marathon of a movie, taking you through multiple decades and through many different phases of Elvis’s life — from his early and provocative beginnings to his time in the army to his Las Vegas residency and everything in between — framed around his complex (and often contentious) relationship with the Colonel. It’s fitting that the beginning of Elvis and the Colonel’s management relationship starts at a carnival because the whole movie kind of feels like one, with flashing lights and the pace of a tilt- a-whirl. Like any film brought to the screen by any of the capital-D Directors we see today, “Elvis” is covered in Luhrmann’s fingerprints — from the ostentatious visuals to the extraordinary attention to the music. There’s certainly a lot to look at throughout the film: flashy period- specific costumes and accessories, frenetic editing and scenes that focus primarily on creating a spectacle. “Elvis” also has an unusual soundtrack that combines period-specific music with more modern tunes, a feature that’s KARI ANDERSON Daily Arts Writer becoming one of Luhrmann’s signature touches. However, deliberate needle drops of Elvis songs and performances of blues tunes are overshadowed by odd music choices: dramatic strings playing over Elvis songs, bizarre inclusions of songs by modern-day artists (such as a jarring Doja Cat addition), even an I-must’ve-heard-that-wrong hint of instrumentals from ’90s hits like “Toxic” and “Backstreet’s Back” hidden in a montage. before his music career begins. Joe, who believes his passion for music is his spark, doesn’t understand that a spark is not a particular purpose, but a love of life itself. That is what the soul, named 22 (Tina Fey, “30 Rock”), must find. This is expressed in a scene where Joe’s idol tells him a fable about a fish in search of the ocean. When told that he is already in the ocean, the fish says, “This is water. What I want is the ocean.” It’s an easily decipherable metaphor for underappreciating the life you’re already living. I liked directing duo Daniels’s (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” even though it told me nothing new. It’s a different story from “Soul,” but the films share their most obvious message: Life is beautiful just because it is life, despite how difficult or bland it often seems. Both films have more to them than this message — “Soul” is more specifically about appreciating life as a whole rather than losing sight of all but one particular goal or passion. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” leans into the meaninglessness of life and addresses familial conflicts and generational trauma — but the elusive beauty of normal life is the main takeaway. I dislike movies whose messages I’ve heard before, but this type of life-affirming film is an exception. When my mom told me she liked Wim Wenders’s 1987 film “Wings of Desire” because it made her feel “happy to be alive,” that was the draw for me. In the film, an angel, Damien (Bruno Ganz, “The House that Jack Built”), gives up immortality to return to ordinary life, partly in order to be with the living woman he falls in love with, but also to experience “at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say, ‘now’ … and no longer ‘forever’ and ‘for eternity.’” In “Soul,” 22 watches a man and his daughter walk by on a sidewalk, the wind blow through a tree and a seed pod spiral to the ground — basic life things, but in this scene, they are enough to make her want to live. In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh, “Crazy Rich Asians”) realizes that life in her universe is worthwhile, despite being “meaningless” because of the love she has for her family. Design by Abby Schreck Worrying about the films that bring me temporary joy Baz Luhrmann tries to get you “all shook up” with ‘Elvis’ Austin Butler as Elvis in Warner Bros. Pictures’ drama “ELVIS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Read more at michigandaily.com ERIN EVANS Daily Arts Writer HUGH STEWART/Daily