The Great Gatsby
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carrey Mulligan
Length: 142 minutes
Country: USA
The Great Gatsby was the book that made me want to study literature. From the ages of sixteen to eighteen I even called it my ‘favourite book’, although before and after I insisted I couldn’t possibly choose. I studied it at school. I studied it at university. I even re-read it three or four times in between and bought a second copy because there was more of my writing than Fitzgerald’s in my first, which really does his gorgeous prose a great disservice.
It’s the Roaring Twenties and our narrator Nick Carraway stumbles east to New York to join the bond business. He falls in with his cousin Daisy, her husband Tom, and her friend Jordan, eventually discovering that he lives next door to a mansion of castle proportions. The mysterious owner of the mansion, Gatsby, throws parties attended by anyone who is anyone, while he stands at the end of his dock reaching for the green light that shines from Daisy’s house. Gatsby and Daisy have a past, and Nick observes as they learn whether or not the past can be retrieved or repeated, and whether American Dreams can be attained.
I was instinctively nervous to see the film. A lifetime of devotion to Harry Potter has taught me transferable lessons on seeing books and films as separate entities. As with any adaptation, a lover of the ‘Great American Novel’ should imagine themselves attending not a ‘film of the book’ but a ‘film version of the book’. I was not (and nor should any lover of books or films or film version of books) expecting director Baz Luhrmann to ‘stay true to the book’. I wanted to see a film that took the essence of the book – the longing for a dream made impossible by the pedestal it was placed on – and reinvented it in a new art form.
Having said all that, I was still annoyed when the film opened on a Nick Carraway plotline that was not in the book and cheapened the film’s characterisation of Nick. Or perhaps I was just annoyed at Tobey Maguire’s bland, listless, absent portrayal of Nick throughout. The paradox of Nick’s being both ‘within and without’ the story, as both narrator and character, is portrayed ineffectively in the film: one scene sees drunken Nick looking out of the window and seeing another Nick in the street. They wave and it looks gimmicky. Combined with the sheer boredom of Maguire (I cannot think of a performance that justfies him as a paid actor), Nick is reduced to a nothing character, and this is an unforgivable flaw in the film.
DiCaprio’s Gatsby is wonderfully delusional and inconsistent. The Gatsby in every scene is a different character…
The rest of the characterisation is masterful. Daisy is perfectly luminous, wide-eyed, and empty, Jordan perfectly rude, aloof, and enchanting, Tom perfectly boorish. DiCaprio’s Gatsby is wonderfully delusional and inconsistent. The Gatsby in every scene is a different character, from the charming host to the nerpained adolescent lover, to the crazed maniac in the New York heat. Some critics have suggested this portrayal confuses the audience; one that never feels it has grasped or understood who or what the character is. To my mind, that is exactly the point.
I think Moulin Rouge is a good film but I don’t enjoy watching it. It hurts my eyes and my head; it moves too quickly for me to get attached. I want to look away but can’t because it literally glitters. In The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann has retained all the loved sparkle and energy of Moulin Rouge but withdrawn the sharp jump cuts and impossible pace. With the help of a deep and soulful soundtrack that mixes jazz with contemporary hip-hop, the speed is moderated, undulating from Nick’s slow (read: Maguire’s boring) contemplation of life around him to the party scenes that make the film. These parties are utterly exaggerated and surreal, disorienting and fixating in equal measure, pulling you in to a close up before spinning you out like you’re drunk on highballs and dancing with the screen.
Other than these scenes, there was not a lot that was memorable about this film. If you went to the film new to the story, not having read the book, you’d probably ask yourself what the fuss was all about. My father sent me this heart-breaking text message: “I won’t grab for the book then!” Please do grab for the book, because part of me thinks that other than the Nick Carraway shamble, this was the best a film version of The Great Gatsby could be. The story is just more beautiful in words than on screen.
Comments (2)