The Great Gatsby

Before I begin a warning: I am not going to spend much time in this review comparing the movie to the novel from which it is adapted. I believe a film should stand on its own away from the source material. I will be looking at it specifically as a film, with the exception of talking about the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald that are featured in the film. This will not be a place where I hate the film because it can never live up to the book. I cannot count 5 movies that equal or best their source material. I just strongly believe nothing you see on screen can match what you see in your head. What you see on the screen is one man's vision of something millions of people have their own visions of. It is not fair. That being said, The Great Gatsby is one of my five favorite books and it was tough to separate the two In fact, this might have been the most I have struggled with those ideas in terms of comparing a book to the adaptation.

Just who is Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio)? That is the question on Nick Carraway's mind as he moves in next door to him in the early 1920s. Gatsby lives in a castle in the West Egg village of Long Island. Nick moves into a little shack next door for peace and quiet to read up on stock brokerage. Carraway has dreams of being a writer, but he does not think himself very good, so he makes his money in bonds. He hears whispers of this Gatsby fellow, and he can feel Gatsby staring at him from Gatsby's castle, but he has not met him. Hell, even when he does finally meet him, Carraway realizes he knows nothing about this Gatsby character. No one does. There are rumors of course, but who can separate the rumors of murder, espionage,and mob ties from the truth? Perhaps, Carraway's cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) can because once, long ago, Daisy and Gatsby were lovers. When Gatsby went to war, she waited and waited but eventually met and married Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). Daisy and Tom are miserable, and Tom has never been faithful to her. In fact, Tom even takes Nick on a trip to the city to pick up his mistress and party with her and her friends. Carraway is unsure of what to make of all of this noise, but he is also getting sucked in deeper and deeper. His submission into this rich world is complete when Jay Gatsby sends him a formal invitation for one of his infamous parties. No one ever gets an invitation, they just show up for the decadence and debauchery. The liquor is freely flowing, the jazz is hot, the morals loose, and the surroundings are lush and vibrant. It is everything the 1920s were if you were lucky enough to have wealth. Eventually Gatsby introduces himself to Carraway and Nick is immediately taken in by Gatsby's charmed life. he even goes as far to set up a meeting between the long lost lovers. Daisy and Gatsby reconnect and it sets off a chain reaction of events that take up the final 45 minutes of the film.

Baz Lurhman is a director who often focuses much on style over substance. His films are lavish, and almost always have an overwrought love affair at their core. I love them all. I think he mixes contemporary visuals with classic stories. I love his visual flair, and his theatricality. He is, in a way, the perfect person to direct this film. He is, in a way, the absolute wrong person to direct this film, as well. The Great Gatsby is a classic American story of the emptiness of the decade of decadence. It is a story that points to the insane differences between the haves and the have nots. The bright, loud colors and parties are starkly contrasted by the greys and dull blues of the city where the poor reside. It is about the waste of the American Dream, the lack of substance and caring of those wealthy people who let everyone else clean up their messes. Baz gets this story half right. His movie is half successful at telling a story with a social conscious. He is, however, fully successful at telling a sweeping romantic tragedy. It will depend on what you want from this story. If you want the lavish parties, the loud music, the wonderful clothes and the debauchery of the roaring 20s, you will be happy. If you want a romantically tragic story between two people who appear destined to be together, but in reality, could not be more different, you will be happy. If you want a film that fully discusses the differences of the class system, of how the roaring 20s were a hollow time for mountains of people, you might find yourself a bit disappointed.

Me, I am in the middle. There are things I absolutely loved about the film. First off, DiCaprio and Mulligan are fantastic. There is no one better for the iconic Jay Gatsby than DiCaprio. He embodies the empty charms of a man who has no idea who he is because he has been lying to everyone. He is utterly magnetic through the entire film, but he is at his best when Jay is coming undone. Mulligan's Daisy is pitch perfect. I wish the script had made her just a bit less whiny and pouty, but Mulligan handles it with grace, charm and ultimately turns Daisy into the vacant obnoxious character she always was. The big confrontation in the final act is perfectly played by her, turning Daisy from someone you are almost rooting for into a character you cannot believe has two men fighting for her. However, the best performance in the bunch belong to Joel Edgerton. His Tom Buchanan lights up the screen. He delivers a layered performance for a character is a bit under written. His Tom rises above being a stock villain of the roaring 1920s. I have enjoyed Edgerton's performances up to now, but here he raises the bar. He almost makes Tom a sympathetic character. There are some great supporting performances as well, and a few nice cameo performances that round out the cast. Then, there is this nagging down spot in the acting, Tobey Maguire. Maguire is first, too old to be believable as the wide eyed Nick Carraway. He is our point of view character, and it is very tough to hear him narrating lines written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. he does not sound right in this time period. His entire performance is all off. I can think of a few actors who would have been much better. In fact, the only thing he does well, is befriend Gatsby, which makes sense because DiCaprio and Maguire are great friends. Their chemistry is good and it almost makes Maguire believable.

Baz' theatricality is also welcome during the first half of the film. The parties are wonderfully shot, edited together and costumed. Everything is in its perfect spot and all of the parties make you wish you were there. The best visual moment of the film, though, is when Carraway first goes to visit Daisy and Tom. Tom opens the door to a lounging room and it is full of white curtains flapping in a clam breeze and we just see the silhouette of Daisy and hear her giggle. It is this wonderful introduction to Daisy. Daisy, draped in the innocent white of these curtains, flashes just her hand at first, then reveals the rest of her and in that moment, we are convince Daisy is as pure as they come. That momentary fantasy is destroyed throughout the course of the film, but man what a gorgeous moment. There are tons of wonderfully gorgeous shots of Gatsby's mansion, and of the Buchanan mansion as well. The staff of these mansions are all perfectly choreographed and impeccably dressed. Gatsby's bright yellow car is a stunning marvel of a vehicle and the sequences of driving are all kind of thrilling. The set up is wonderful. The scene where Daisy and Gatsby get reacquainted in Gatsby's castle is wonderfully romantic and the clothes he throws at her are wonderfully vibrant and that moment is wonderfully rich in depth. A man has so much that he can just throw his clothes around like they were nothing.

Much has been made on-line of the music of the film. Baz has always favored contemporary music in his films and The Great Gatsby is no different. I found the marriage of jazz and contemporary music the most successful thing in the film. The rap music blasts as Nick narrates the story, and then as the focus shifts to being in the scene, the rap fades out, and the jazz comes in full blast. It lets us know that this story is not just about the 1920s, but about our time period now. We are in another decade of decadence where the haves party away ignorant to the struggles of the have nots. Rap music embodies that idea. Gatsby is hip-hop. He is a man who came from nothing and did what he had to do to get where he is. He throws part after party, but is ultimately empty. Rappers love to reference Scarface because they love the decadence, but Gatsby would be a more apt reference, except rappers do not like to talk about the emptiness. They only want to show the excess alcohol, the girls and the drugs. The allusions work for me in this film. The idea is a bit half baked, but because I am in tune to rap culture, I understood what Baz was doing. He blends the ideas incredibly well. He uses the songs from the soundtrack perfectly, especially Beyonce's "Back in Black" and Lana Del Rey's "Young and Beautiful." Actually the melody of "Young and Beautiful" haunts the film on more than one occasion.

Everything else in this movie is a mess. The second half particularly is a mess. Once the story shifts to being completely about Gatsby's obsession for Daisy, the film loses steam and it loses real focus. The second half is a very poorly paced, and there were moments where I was even bored and I have never been bored in a Baz Lurhman film until now. Part of that was me feeling the film was missing a chance to make a bigger statement, part of that was that Lurhman's visual flair gave way to a much more traditional form of story telling. Gone were the weirdly quick edits, and quirky camera work. Everything became very by the numbers. I also loathed the narrative framing device of Carraway telling this story after it happened in a sanitarium. He is writing his story after his doctor at the asylum told him he should write it down and he could even burn it after it was done, but it would be good to write it down. My girlfriend pointed out that it makes Nick an even more unreliable narrator, and I like that explanation, but I have to see the movie again with that lens before I can see if that works for me. Honestly, it felt like a cheap way to allow Carraway to narrate the story and the narration appeared to be the only way for F. Scott's gorgeous words to make it into the movie. I am not sure how else his words could have been worked in because the places where his words were in the dialogue felt out of place because his writing is so unique. However, leaning on F. Scott's words almost point out glaring dialogue miscues because the writing in the film is not up to the level of F. Scott. This leaves us with narration that features lush wonderfully written sentences full of perfect word choices and deep meaning, but dialogue that can be flat, stilted and meandering. Also, the scenes of the character driving into the city do not properly represent the desolation of the poor. The film kind of glosses over that aspect of the 1920s. If they had driven that point home more, you might have felt Gatsby's emptiness more. We might have understood the loneliness of those big lavish parties.

It becomes impossible to talk about the themes of The Great Gatsby without talking about the novel, so I am just going to say this, the film definitely focuses more on the love affair and obsession Gatsby has with Daisy. In that undertaking, the film is successful. You understand, at first, why Gatsby loves Daisy and why Daisy allows herself to get wrapped up in the foolishness of it because she honestly believes "that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool..." It is a quote that girls all over cling to as some romantic idea, but the film exposes it as the thoughts of a shallow girl who toys with people because she has no idea how to be happy. There are definitely opportunities missed to reach something more, but for a piece of mass consumption, The Great Gatsby is probably going to be successful. Baz Lurhman sure knows how to create a functioning world and the first half of this film is a complete and total home run. In the end though, I was left feeling too "ehh" about the whole thing.

Oh for those wondering, most of the most popular quotes from the book are featured in the film.

Final Grade: C+