Elvis Presley: The Searcher' is a beautiful way to rediscover the man who became King

Here is Elvis, rehabbed at last and brought down from his lofty and lunatic afterlife as an icon, reminding us that he was once just a man.
Of course, he was never just any man, he was ELVIS - from birth, it seems. The surviving twin of a doting mother, raised up from the Depression dirt of Tupelo and postwar slums of Memphis, opening his mouth in front of Sam Phillips' microphone and seamlessly merging black and white American song traditions into a form that was new and everlasting. He was imbued with the holy spirit of gospel music and landed instead on something faddishly called rock 'n' roll.
With a raft of producers that includes Priscilla Presley, director Thom Zimny's insightful and stirring 3 1/2-hour HBO documentary, "Elvis Presley: The Searcher" is a fine demonstration of how the passage of time can help place even the biggest and most overloved superstars into a blessed relief. The film is a calm and deeply empathetic recounting of Presley's life, split in two. The first half takes us up to 1960 and his career-interrupting military service; the second half is, well, the rest of Elvis: movie star, obsessive workhorse, sweat-drenched showman, tragic figure.
A careful melange of archival film and sonic clarity, "The Searcher" is a fine reassessment of Presley's origins and impact. Its many sources, whether alive or dead (from Elvis himself to "Colonel" Tom Parker to writers such as Alan Light and Jon Landau and musicians such as Robbie Robertson and Emmylou Harris) are heard in interviews rather than seen by a camera, which helps maintain a serious focus.