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For those who found themselves disliking the cinematic Candy Land of visuals that is Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby," all I can say is that you should have known better. It would be like if you rushed to a Quentin Tarantino-directed remake of "Mary Poppins" and found yourself disappointed and stunned when Mary proved herself capable of shooting bullets out of the metal tip of her umbrella and Burt slashed the throats of all the other chimney sweeps on that roof because they were in competition with him for work. Some directors, you see, are true artistes. They see every story through their own, unique eyes and brain. Every story looks like theirs.
And so it goes without saying that "The Great Gatsby" is - and perhaps first and foremost - chock full of Baz Luhrmann-y goodness (or overkill, depending on your tolerance level for his style). There are gradiose widescreen zoom-ins and zoom-outs that look vaguely computer-generated. There are deep, deep warm and cool colors sharing residency in each frame. There is moment after moment when you feel as though your eyes could quite possibly explode as a result of the ocular orgy in front of you.
There's also this "Great Gatsby" thing. You know, the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel? This paragon of American literature that one speculates might sit second (behind the Bible) on a Library of Congress list of books to save in the event of a fire. There is scant exaggeration in my saying that English teachers all over America sat at the ready, waiting impatiently to see what Luhrmann would do with the green light. Certainly our reverence toward his source material weighed on him as he co-wrote his screenplay and directed his film.
I watched "The Great Gatsby" with a palpable sense that Luhrmann was forever looking over his shoulder to "get it right." To draw more accurate comparisons between mediums, I reread the novel (a book that I have publicly and shamefully admitted that I had not read since my junior year of high school, even as an English teacher in a department full of Gatsby disciples) not long before seeing the film. And so it is the greatest strength and also the most obvious liability of this latest adaptation of Fitzgerald's work that this "Great Gatsby" is very, very faithful to the source material. One who knows the novel well could have sat in the movie theatre with the book in his or her lap, checking off each page as it passed on screen. Now, there is a certain geeky thrill to this devotion, to be sure. But there was also a bit of joy sucked out of what strongly felt like duty or obligation.
I'm not going to spend much time on plot summary, but instead put on my English teacher hat, wag my finger, and tell you to read the freaking book if you haven't already or if you don't remember it. I refuse to be your Spark Notes! The novel is rightfully celebrated as a sparse and lean 180 pages of thematic and symbolic genius and wisdom, with characters equally worthy of study regardless of whether they seem fully formed or merely sketched. If you think you might have read "The Great Gatsby" this one time in high school, I urge you to follow my example of treating yourself to a re-read. Trust me when I tell you that your adult self can glean so much more from this masterwork than your hormonal young brain had the ability to process back then.
Suffice it to say that "The Great Gatsby" is, in many ways, the story of Nick Carraway, a young man who moves to the "less fashionable" West Egg, one of a chain of islands on the Long Island Sound about 20 miles from New York (5). (See what I did there? That's called parenthetical notation, kids.) While renting a modest cottage tucked back in what he thought would be a quiet place where he could study up on the banking and investment industries to take advantage of the unbelievable prosperity of Wall Street in this decadent decade prior to the great stock market chrash, Carraway is - through a drawn-out sequence of somewhat mysterious interactions and not-so-mysterious introductions to intoxication - brought face to face with Jay Gatsby, his next door neighbor.
Fitzgerald's writing focuses on Carraway's analysis of Gatsby, including his hero worship of him (or, if you like, his desire for him, as some want to interpret it) and Gatsby's motivations for throwing legendary parties on a weekly basis in his palatial residence. In early encounters, Nick is barely ankle deep in a wading pool in terms of truly knowing Gatsby. Eventually, of course, he falls down the well. His infatuation turned to understanding is not unlike what it must have been like for a disciple of Jesus to perhaps become magnetized and energized by him long before fully understanding his messages.
Of course the relationship that matters most in terms of the dramatic tension of "The Great Gatsby" outside of the budding friendship between Nick and Jay is that of Jay and Daisy Buchanan, a vapid socialite who lives with her husband Tom (who oozes machismo) directly across the bay in East Egg. (Luhrmann shows us that a green light perched atop the end of the Buchanans' pier marks the location of their estate by night, while during their day, their gargantuan display of Tom's own immense weath is clearly visible across the water.) Daisy and Nick are cousins, and before long the viewer (or reader) learns that regardless of whether or not Gatsby ever has any genuine motives in befriending Nick, he is most certainly doing so to get in contact with Daisy. The rich and mysterious charmer and the Kentucky girl had a thing five years earlier before Gatsby disappeared. She settled for Tom in the interim. And Luhrmann hammers it home multiple times that everything Gatsby is doing - every life choice he makes - is an attempt at reclaiming Daisy.
I can't use up my film blog space for novel analysis. I'd be here all day. So I'll focus on the adaptation aspects of the story. So let's talk about the actors, first.
Tobey Maguire plays Nick Carraway, and while I had my doubts about him going in, I was immediately struck with the thought that Maguire looks older in the film. He looks like a man. And I thought he handled the character very well, particularly in his recreation of the novel's narration, mostly lifted verbatim from the original pages and frequently delivered in voiceover. I thought his eyes and body language captured the excitement of a young man infatuated with another. If a viewer wants to believe that Carraway is gay and in love with Gatsby, I think that viewer can find evidence in the performance. And if a viewer wishes to take a more traditional interpretive approach concerning why Nick would be so affected by Gatsby, that evidence is more than amply provided as well.
Leonardo DiCaprio, of course, plays Jay Gatsby, reteaming with Luhrmann for the first time since the director last adapted classic literature with 1996's "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet." I have always found DiCaprio to be a solid actor who grows more deeply into his talents with each passing role, and whole-heartedly enjoyed his wicked turn as a slave owner is last year's "Django Unchained." But this was the first time I think I really understand his charm as a beautiful person. Perhaps this was the right director and the right part for DiCaprio at the right time, but he seemed to best convey what Gatsby requires in a purely physical sense. Only Ryan Gosling pops into my head as someone else who could have communicated this charm as successfully.
But DiCaprio is better than charming here. In ways both subtle and overt, his Gatsby is at times terribly nervous and regretful, and DiCaprio sneaks out glances and moments where the audience can see that Gatsby is terrified of both rejection and the uncovering of the truths about his past that he's built magnificent backstories around. There absolutely has to be a vulnerability to Gatsby, and I think it's important that Nick is unable to detect it until much later in his life. The film gets this right. To me, DiCaprio was fully effective as Gatsby in every possible way.
The support cast is equally effective. In fact, I have few complaints about the film's performances. Friends of mine have debated the casting of Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, but I might have enjoyed his performance most of all, as he surprisingly managed to add a level of humanity to Tom's douchebaggery that is tough to glean when reading the novel. His is a physical performance that reminded me a lot of the work Corey Stoll did as Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen's recent "Midnight in Paris." Both had a raw and animalistic masculine energy, and I thought that served the character of Tom well here. The audience has to buy why Daisy would try to replace Gatsby with Tom. Money and sex are the reasons, of course, and Edgerton communicates both.
As Daisy, the excellent Carey Mulligan conveys the boredom and ennui of a spoiled girl who is either never satisfied or unable to make up her mind. I read one review that referred to Daisy as the "biggest piece of shit character in all of American literature." I'm not sure I'd go to that extreme, but if there's a grain of truth to such an assessment, Mulligan mixes in the necessary softness to help us understand, if only just a little bit, Gatsby's motivations.
But talking about "The Great Gatsby" is the most fun when discussion its technical details and directorial choices, and given Luhrmann's clear status as an auteur, I believe that the credit for both the film's successes and flaws lie with him. Yes, there were moments when his operatic, flashy camera work betrayed a need for intimacy or stillness to let some emotion seep through the film's celuloid pores, but can you think of another contemporary film director who could better portray the decadence of the era than Luhrmann? Somewhere in a warehouse they are already engraving the plate for art direction Oscar with this film's title. Costumes and settings are as meticulous and sumptuous as we've come to expect from a Luhrmann production. In this area, only Tim Burton is his peer in terms of visual mood mastery.
Like Burton, though, such emphasis on these physical details frequently amounts to shallow emotion, and as I've hinted at before, the unbelievable feast for the eyes we're given here, coupled with a need to translate the novel almost word for word, laquers the film with a sheen of stiffness and emotional distance. Case in point... I happened to see "Man of Steel" before "Gatsby" (though "Gatsby" was released almost two months prior), and I choked up with emotion much more in the Superman movie than I did here. Was there a way to prevent that? I'd like to think so.
An early party scene - the one when Nick tells us it is the first time he's ever been truly drunk - is a great example of Luhrmann using his trademark style to the hilt. His "Moulin Rouge" readily comes to mind as partygoers in an illicit rendezvous for Tom and his mistress, Myrtle, are surrounded by drinking and flying feathers from pillow fights, scantily-clad women draped over velveteen chaises and a random man on a fire escape blowing a trumpet while the soundtrack delivers the jarring anachronism of contemporary hip-hop flavored faintly with jazz-aged rhythms. This scene really represents what we get most of the time, this bag of tricks for the eyes.
Certainly every visual symbol present in the novel transfers successfully here. The eyes on the billboard. The green light. The yellow car. The views of Gatsby's and Buchanan's homes. The film is even a bit too heavy handed in ensuring that the less literate audience member is aware that these things are, in fact, symbolism. And Luhrmann adds his own touches, such as the identification of Gatsby only via glimpses of a garish, rectangular onxy ring on his finger prior to the revelation of his identity; the ring then becomes a motif throughout the film. No doubt I could scarcely ask for more in terms of capturing all of these little things from the book.
Still, something clearly fails with this "Great Gatsby," or at least I think so. I thought it telling when, upon the film's end, I turned to my wife and asked her what she thought. Her answer? "That was pretty." Hmm. I completely agree, though I'm not sure that's the way I would have liked to respond.
The real problem with "The Great Gatsby" is the one evident in almost every scene, such as the one I described a bit earlier, and that is the fact that the film's individual elements - the camera work, the sound, the style - are all so individually ostentateous and interesting that the sum of them never gels into the whole of its parts. If you're offended by a Jay-Z-supervised song score in a film set in the 1920s, you will find yourself pulled away from the story's emotional core every time you hear a song that doesn't seem to fit the era. If you're completing a mental checklist of each of the novel's elements while watching, you only find yourself diving in emotionally up to the waist. There's never a full immersion.
Perhaps what this all comes down to is that those of us who know Fitzgerald's novel well have already so thoroughly considered the work's depth and dense thematic elements that no one else's interpretation of the work can compete with our own. Which is unfortunate, because Lord knows this director sure tries. By the end of the film, I felt myself emotionally at about the place where Nick is in the first third of the film: eyes wide with wonderment, head filled with questions, heart pounding a mile a minute. Even in the film's violent climactic moments - which, by the way, I think were pulled off nicely - I never became as emotionally overwhelmed as I was intellectually interested to see if Luhrmann would "get it right." He gets everything right. But that's basically all he does. And why isn't that enough?
Unless I'm mistaken, for all of Luhrmann's bold visual and sonic choices, he only really tampers with one aspect of the novel, which is to frame Nick Carraway's narration as a conversation with a doctor in a mental hospital. Luhrmann's devotion to sticking to Fitzgerald's language is so complete that we frequently view his words physically on the screen. This device - yet another visual distraction - is justified by the conceit that Carraway's doctor has encouraged him to write down his stories of his time with Gatsby. This invention is developed through a glimpse of paperwork that lists Nick's visit as a patient being a result of a cocktail of insecurities and alcoholism. A stretch? Perhaps. But is it an unbelievable construct? I don't think so.
There are those who don't like this tampering, but I absolutely loved it. I find voice-over narration to be a difficult thing for a director to successfully pull off, so who would Nick be talking to without this bold choice on Luhrmann's part? When I read "Gatsby," Nick is talking directly to me; for whatever reason, the act of reading manages a level of intimacy between page and person that is lacking in movies. A movie cannot just be a physical manifestation of words from a book marching to life in page order. "The Great Gatsby" suffers from stunted emotion in many places specifically because it works too hard to attempt its carbon copy script translation. It breathes and is energized in those few moments where liberties are taken. The message must be right for the medium.
Wherever liberties were taken, I was energized. I thought I'd hate the anachronistic music, but it blended energetically with elements of authentic jazz and worked just as well as "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge" did in this regard. This is, after all, simply another detail within Luhrmann's authorial style, and I simply embraced it. So, too, did I embrace the dramatic and quicky camera work and the art direction overkill. "The Great Gatsby," after all, takes place during a time of exorbitant decadence and excess! Did not Baz Luhrmann successfully communicate this, even if other aspects of the film did not meet expectations?
I could see myself watching "The Great Gatsby" multiple times, studying different aspects and angles. I could see myself watching the film with my annotated copy of Fitzgerald's too-flimsy-to-be-this-rich paperback in my lap, taking note of moments where dialogue was expanded upon, highlighting direct lines of translation. Though I have not seen all of the other versions of this book that have been sent to movie theatres, I can see this one being considered the definitive film interpretation.
But what I also know is that my fondness for "The Great Gatsby" will always be best represented by the image of an isolated Gatsby at the end of his pier in the dark, his arm outstretched in an attempt to physically grasp the green light in the distance. Somehow, whether it can be explained or not, the film manages to be too faithful and too bold at the same time, leaving audiences to find the space in the middle, which is, well, pretty.
