THE GREAT GATSBY
Sunday, June 2, 2013 at 2:05PM Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Amitabh Bachchan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke and Jack Thompson.
Writers: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce; based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Rating: 1.5/5
A vapid, cartoonish rendering of a literary work that has achieved greatness only after decades of academic dissection, Australian aggrandiser Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is unlikely to garner any interest at all from future generations. An impenetrable folly of gaudy excess and crass emoting, the film’s only achievement beyond the technical prowess of its staging is in highlighting the shortcomings of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tome: as an allegory, it is masterful, but as a romantic narrative, it is a meagre work.
Peopled by flapper-era caricatures partaking in white-collar social orgies fuelled by selfish hedonism, Luhrmann’s interpretation of Fitzgerald’s oft-debated novel emerges as grotesque melodrama that plays more like a Mexican telenovela than a respectful reinterpretation of 1920’s New York high society.
The director has earned the right to put his spin on classic literature after his ultra-modern take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the dazzling reworking of the legend of the Moulin Rouge, but those works lent themselves to an aesthetic that embraced high drama and rewarded an adventurous vision. Though superficially a chronicle of the partying lifestyle of the wealthy few before their greed subverted a nation, The Great Gatsby novel is never in any way a celebration. And if Luhrmann’s films excel at anything, it is in self-conscious celebration, mostly of their own visual cleverness. The result is a film that, perhaps moreso than any other bigscreen adaptation, seems intrinsically, even defiantly, at odds with its source material.
Most strikingly, what emerges from the film is Luhrmann’s utter disregard for dialogue. Whether in the script stage, where the words he co-authored with regular partner Craig Pearce were penned with a grating affectation (undoubtedly to mimic Fitzgerald’s prose), or during post-production, where those words are forced into the background amidst arrhythmic camerawork and fragmented editing, the director determinedly refuses to let his cast construct and finish sentences. The camera soars clear of the action for another sweeping CGI cityscape, a dozen partygoers shimmy between the characters and the audience, the throbbing Jay-Z-produced soundtrack wells; Luhrmann finds a hundred different ways to rob his able but overwhelmed stable of actors any real voice.
The plot is a standard recollection scenario centred on Nick Carraway (a wan and unfocussed Tobey Maguire), now a ravaged alcoholic writer seeking sanitarium treatment under Dr Perkins (Jack Thompson, one of many great Aussie actors who turn up for three lines and a rare Hollywood-size paycheque). He recalls, on the page, his time with the great J. Gatsby, a Howard Hughes-like figure whose parties were events of legendary largesse. Gatsby is played by Hollywood golden boy Leonardo DiCaprio (as it was in 1974, by then it-guy, Robert Redford), who makes the most of his close-ups and furrows his brow with exaggerated angst, but never fully convinces or engages. Carey Mulligan is Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin and the apple of Gatsby’s eye, though she is all doe-eyed airiness and utterly disposable in the part.
All support cast members play to the back row, as no doubt instructed to by Luhrmann, but perhaps also as a means by which to be heard above the aural and visual shrillness of every scene. Joel Edgerton (as Daisy’s brutish husband, Tom) looks particularly uncomfortable and resoundingly miscast, though Isla Fisher (as the doomed Myrtle Wilson) and Jason Clarke (as her oafish mechanic husband, George) are fine. Most striking is Elizabeth Debicki as starlet Jordan Baker, though her part is giving short shrift by the third-act.
Luhrmann has pronounced his affinity for the novel and, in particular, the character of J. Gatsby. It is an analogous relationship that could come back to haunt the filmmaker, for there is indeed a very clear connection. Like Gatsby, Luhrmann loves to put on a party but has an addiction for the ornate that leaves no room for the emotion and intricacy of real life; it ultimately leads to both their downfalls.
Archetypically, Luhrmann's current creative mindset reflects more PT Barnum than J Gatsby; a manipulative showman able to conjure images of light and colour to dazzle the masses while wilfully neglecting their hearts and minds. In his last film, an entire continent was done a disservice by being viewed through this prism; here, it is just one man, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who must endure the ignominy.
Reader Comments (1)
"cartoonish" was exactly the word I was thinking, too. I have not read the book, but this movie version honestly reminded me of the love triangle with Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto. That was the depth of the love story.