The Great Gatsby - Thoughts On The Film

I wrote a review of this novel way back last year (which you can read here) where I said that the Luhrmann Adaptation was to be released (last) December - Boy did they move that date! It came out here on Thursday and on Friday to celebrate the end of my degree I went to see it - in 3D no less!

First off I'll just say that I hate Toby Maguire  can not stand him in anything, so this film was always going to be a challenge for me as he is cast as the protagonist Nick Carraway, and...he wasn't good, I'm sorry if you're a fan, but really his confusion and awkwardness throughout just made him so unnatural to me. I know Nick was the perpetual outsider in the novel but, ugh, I don't know, I just felt like he was there only to support Jay and Daisy, whereas in the book, that's the first feeling you get, but then Nick becomes a main character in his own right through his way of thinking and his calm understanding. I know that it's hard to turn that kind of character into someone big on-screen, but Luhrmann found a way to convey Nicks thinking through his typing up his memoirs, and he still wasn't believable for me. I just think different casting could have improved the film so much, in terms of Nick anyway.

Leonardo Dicaprio as Jay Gatsby, was pretty darn perfect. I didn't think anyone could get away with saying "old sport" so many times in 140 minutes, but he did! And he did it without being repetitive which is surely enough to merit praise in it's own right. For me, Dicaprio just nailed the act of the cool slick city gentleman, simmering with desire and complicated thoughts under the surface. Within his mysterious first few half appearances, you just knew the character was going to be the man you'd read about - and that's all I wanted. I also really loved the way Luhrmann kept taking us back to that green light and cementing in that hope that kept Gatsby going, it was such a nice way to implement his desire without giving him unnecessary dialogue or making him in anyway un-Gatsby through thoughtful monologues or anything twee like that.

Daisy was Daisy. Carey Mulligan played her well enough but she always was the least important character in the novel, it was Gatsby's infatuation of her that was important, not really the character herself.

The other lead females did well enough though Elizabeth Debicki was just beautiful as Jordan Baker, but she kind of lacked that spunkiness from the novel that makes her so memorable.

Isla Fisher as Myrtle was quite despicable as she should be, but again lacking. I think it's because so much was missing, smaller story lines were taken out so that the film could focus on this "bromance" between Carraway and Gatsby, which to me was not even one of the most important themes from the novel. I know that books are not always one sided and we each take from them what we will, but I just don't know what made Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, who was the other screenwriter, take this friendship to be the most important thing to show on screen.

Not that all of this means I didn't enjoy the film; far from it, it was good, it just wasn't a great adaptation. Probably the best thing about this film is just watching it, because Luhrmann as many know makes theatre production of films, and what better show to put on then one of the American Dream - the books ultimate theme. This gorgeous setting of a changing city free from prohibition and out to loose morals have a damn good time was just perfect for him to blow up on the big screen. The film truly is a visual delight, and especially in 3D, where you truly feel the magnificent splendour of a Gatsby Party. Another great thing about Luhrmann is the way he mixes modern music into these tales of long ago, (I'm sure we all remember Romeo's entrance to Radiohead's Talk Show Host *shivers*) and this is done well in Gatsby. The soundtrack is on-point and makes you wonder what else could possibly of been played during Gatsby's parties if not Beyonce overs or Kanye West.

Go and see this film, see it if you haven;t read the book and you'll probably come away more satisfied than if you have, but even then, it's still worth a watch just t better imaging that world where men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” 

Well, I do love a book set in the 20's, and Gatsby doesn't let me down. I first read this book a few years ago, I think I ordered it online when I first got into that genre and this and Fiesta have been two of my absolute favourites. Set during the prohibition era of the "Roaring Twenties" this book is like a glamorous look back to the past. The writing is so beautifully descriptive that I get a wonderful sense of the atmosphere - probably one of the most delightfully descriptive books I've ever read. 

We are led through the story by narrator Nick Carraway, a college graduate and war vet. who has recently moved to New York to begin a career. His house sits next to an extravagant mansion, from which a constant stream of luxurious parties erupt. Nick is new to the "scene" and begins to spend time with his cousin Daisy Buchanan,  who lives on the better side of town with her husband and baby girl. After a few weeks Nick is issued an invite to one of the parties in the mansion - to which he takes Daisy's friend Jordan. At the party Nick meets with mysterious Jay Gatsby - the owner of the house and the thrower of the party. He is a curious sort of fellow - he does not even really attend the parties himself - or know many of the guests, and his personality begins to intrigue Nick. 

"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

As Nick is getting to know Gatsby and begin a romance with Jordan, he is also spending time with Daisy and her husband Tom, who is having an affair with a married woman. Nick moves in all of these rather different circles as more of an observer than an attendee, he sits drinking tea with Daisy as she discusses her woes, he goes to parties thrown by Tom's extravagant mistress...but his own real involvement in the story and their lives doesn't come till Gatsby tells him a secret which will pull the circles of his life together and involve him in an integral role for two of his friends happiness. 

In a nutshell, The Great Gatsby is all glamour, parties, frivolity, passion, fickle love and bad decisions. Though Nick seems to be a lesser character in the thick of the novel, by the end we realise the flaws in the main protagonists, and the strengths in Nicks.

"He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees." 

Luhrmann's Gatsby is released on 19/12

The book is a satire on the bourgeois culture and the frailty of the American Dream, with the heavy moral "The grass is always greener." But it is also a love story, the depth of which alters depending on which characters eyes you are looking at it through - desperate and consuming compared to wistful and fickle. It's so interesting to be able to see so many different takes on one story through just one character. 

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." 

The book has been adapted into film before but this December will come to cinema in 3D by director Baz Luhrmann, which personally I think is going to be wonderful - who better that a theatrical like Luhrmann to exaggerate the splendour of Gatsby's world? The trailer looks absolutely phenomenal, you can watch it here.