The King

Elvis Presley's 1963 Rolls Royce travels across America. The people who get into the car are musicians, writers, political commentators and ordinary people, and all of them talk about Elvis and about the country. The journey starts in Tupelo, where Elvis was born, passes through Memphis and reaches Las Vegas. The 2016 election campaign is running in the background. Eugene Jarecki's documentary sets Elvis's rise and collapse against America's own story: talent out of the provinces, big money, excess and disintegration. The hardest subject it takes on is how Elvis took what he took from Black music and what he gave back for it; the documentary does not tie that to a single answer but puts different speakers up against each other. Chuck D, Alec Baldwin and James Carville are among those who speak.