A Midwestern war veteran finds himself drawn to the past and lifestyle of his millionaire neighbor.
Director:Baz Luhrmann
Writers:Baz Luhrmann (screenplay),
Craig Pearce (screenplay), 1 more credit »
Stars:Leonardo DiCaprio,
Carey Mulligan,
Joel Edgerton |
See full cast and crew »\
Storyline
An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where
Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his
neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through
the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession,
madness, and tragedy await
User Reviews
THE
GREAT GATSBY There is no movie I have been more prepared to dislike
than this one. How dare some Aussie come over here and tell us about the
meaning of one of the great works of American literature. Especially
this Aussie, Baz Luhrmann, who is known to overload, over-hype and
overcook his theatrical product into a glittery miasma of small meaning
and little consequence. (i.e. Moulin Rouge)
But I was wrong.
Jay
Gatsby has achieved success in a fashion beyond most imaginations,
excepting his own. In true Horatio Alger tradition he has worked hard to
improve himself, but when his past creeps up on him and threatens his
well crafted self image, he suavely and effortlessly changes it, his
past, and he inhabits the change until it becomes the reality. He is the
self made American man in every way. He is the American success myth
both personified and perverted.
Unlike Alger's heroes, he has not
followed the straight and narrow. He has acquired his fabulous wealth
through bootlegging and stock swindles.
This belief, that he can
change his past, to correct it as it were, has given him a veneer of
respectability that has put him in good stead with his underworld
connections. But it is not for them that Gatsby has made this remarkable
metamorphosis. No, he did everything, and I mean everything, for the
love of a woman.
Daisy was Gatsby's great love, but he lost her,
and now in one final herculean effort he is going to correct his past
this one last time. He is going to win her back and make things as they
should have been.
Leo DeCaprio is the only actor of this
generation that could play Gatsby, just as Robert Redford could only
play Gatsby the previous generation. Redford's Gatsby seemed reticent
and insecure about his past; regretful that he must live a lie in order
to accomplish his goal. DeCaprio's Gatsby is forceful, decisive; he is a
determined man of significant accomplishment and great ability. He has a
plan and he is going to execute it and as far as he is concerned, for
all the right reasons. For myself, it is DeCaprio's best and most
powerful performance.
This decision (both DeCaprio's and
Luhrmann's) to take Gatsby down from some ethereal literary icon into a
flesh and blood human being gives the movie an intensity that the 1974
version and most of the literary criticism of the book that I have ever
read, never perceived. This is not a shining white knight rescuing a
damsel in distress; this is a bare knuckles brawl for the hand of Daisy,
and she is going to have to choose.
Tom Buchanan (Joel
Edgerton) is Gatsby's antagonist. He and Daisy were married when Daisy
could no longer wait for Gatsby to prove himself worthy of her. Tom is
as rich, maybe even richer than Gatsby, but his money is old, he is an
aristocrat with a deep sense of entitlement. He has status and wealth
because he's supposed to have status and wealth, and he's not about to
give up all that, and certainly not his wife, to this new money usurper
Gatsby, without a fight.
Bruce Dern played Tom as a kind of loopy
(Dern's specialty) racial conspiracy nut, but Edgerton gives Tom a much
harder edge. When Tom espouses his vile racial philosophies one might
think that someday he might actually do something about it.
Daisy
(Carey Mulligan) is a tough role. For all the time that Gatsby spends
trying to prove he is good enough for Daisy, the audience, for the book
or the film, is led down the path that she is not good enough for him.
Mia Farrow played Daisy as an airhead and a dingbat, but Mulligan gives
Daisy a bit more spine, and fashions a character that has a pretty good
idea where her self-interests lay.
Luhrmann and co-writer Craig
Pearse stay pretty close to the text with a few additions and devices,
most notably, to those of us who read the book, know that it is Nick
Caraway (Tobey Maguire) who tells the story, and is a firsthand witness
to all the events, but we never knew from where he tells the story.
Luhrmann tells us it is from a sanitarium where Nick is drying out from
excessive alcoholism.
As for Luhrmann's reputation for excess:
Well, he certainly visualizes Gatsby's parties as excess, but they are
supposed to be excessive, excessive materialism is part of the point of
the story. There are times when Luhrmann can't resist himself and feels
the compulsion to punctuate matters with some visual flourish, but I did
not find it too distracting. His decision to go 3D however, I think was
wise. The characters seem to come out of the screen and get next to
you. You get to know them personally, and after all this is a very
personal story.
I think this story has survived the test of time
so well because it is basically a love story. Whatever the viewers or
readers opinion of the characters are, Gatsby and Daisy do love each
other, but Fitzgerald was not interested in boy meets girl, boy loses
girl, boy gets girl and they all live happily ever after. Where
Fitzgerald reached his own aspiration of creating high art is in
wondering if living happily ever after is even possible in an age of
class consciousness, even class warfare, that is driven by a compulsive
materialism in a world changing so fast that we can't even formulate the
question before we have to come up with an answer. Luhrmann stays true
to these themes and displays an avid curiosity about them himself.
0 comments:
Post a Comment