Alas....I will say that the trailer is just a shade more satisfying to a certain aspect of my Baz Luhrmann love than the movie. See, what I've always loved about Baz's movies is their passion. They don't go in for restraint or subtlety, when Baz does passion it is explosive and vibrant to the point of nausea and I absolutely love it...probably because it is exactly the sort of experience of emotion I am unlikely ever to have in my own life. And that trailer? It is positively dripping with classic Baz Luhrmann passion. The movie? Surprising as it may seem, I think I could say that it was his most restrained film thus far. Which is not to say that there isn't plenty of emotion there, nor even plenty of over-the-top visual gluttony. But those emotions were restrained, veiled, veneered over and divorced from the orgy-like party scenes. Thematically it is a brilliant move that reinforces the central idea of Luhrmann's adaptation of this specific story....but it did leave me a little bit disappointed in terms of a Baz Luhrmann movie experience.
This is the sort of heavy-handed passion I'm talking about. This
is one of my favorite scenes of all time...
But never fear! If I felt a little disappointed in terms of the blatant emotions of the film it was more than made up for in the casting of it. I have long argued that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the best actors we have today and I don't think he's ever given a better performance than as Jay Gatsby. Of course, we all knew he would. I don't think I have talked to a single person who didn't share the same moment of "of course!" as soon as they found out he was playing the central character. Once you think of him as Gatsby there is absolutely no one else who could have played him. And Leo didn't disappoint. I am one of the few people who didn't study the book in high school (I studied a grand total of one complete book in my high school, and it wasn't till I made it to AP english my senior year...hooray for The Scarlet Letter!) so the first time I read this book was the end of last summer I think (or possibly it was fall?). I didn't really connect with Gatsby when I read it. I didn't understand why Nick would come out of this entire experience and say that the only person he didn't loathe was Gatsby...he seemed to be just as degenerate as the rest of them to me. No, it wasn't till I watched Leo's twitchy, nervous, and intensely anxious performance that I came to connect with the character of Jay Gatsby. He was magnificent. I mean, right down to the smile that I thought couldn't exist as per Nick's description of it:
He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.And when DiCaprio turns smiling to the audience in his big moment of reveal...smiling right at me so it seemed...suddenly I knew exactly what Nick meant. But that was just Gatsby. Though Karissa and I agreed that Tobey Maguire is possibly tied with Michael Cera as the most awkward human on the earth, I think he absolutely nailed Nick Carraway. He has this knack for hilarious expressions that say 50 times more than any amount of dialogue possibly could. I read an interview with Maguire about how it was difficult trying to find a way to play Nick that captured his role as outside observer whilst allowing him the space to be a character who actually did things. I think that trick of expression was a major part of that balance. As he gets drawn into an Epicurean afternoon with Tom and his entourage his face expresses that dissociated observant quality in the midst of his own participation in the whole thing. And even though Maguire seems to have somehow become ridiculous in pop culture (I still love him and think he is terribly under-utilized) I think he carried his darker more dramatic moments wonderfully. Carey Mulligan, too, was magnificent. She caught that breathy, melodramatic way of speaking that you somehow just can't help but associate with flappers. Even more amazing was how in moments she could appear bored--old and almost haggard. Carey Mulligan. Let me remind you what Carey Mulligan looks like
 |
| seriously...so damn adorable |
Slightly less great were my constant flashbacks to Moulin Rouge. As Riss and I discussed on the way out, Moulin Rouge was based heavily on La Traviata and the Orpheus myth. Now, if you were to read either of these stories your first thought would not be "Wow, this is just like The Great Gatsby!". But the way Luhrmann decided to play the story I was constantly reminded of his earlier film. First you have a conservative somewhat naive young man who moves into a new environment of excitement and indulgence. He is caught up in this hedonistic world and is consumed and nearly ruined by it. He slowly rebuilds himself afterward by growing a stubble and writing it all down. There is an ephemeral and unattainable beauty who glitters brightest in this world of color and excitement and all men worship her. Despite all the best efforts of her true love to win her and take her out of the artifice and corruption he fails (though in this case he is the one who dies rather than she). The party scenes gave off the same frenetic energy as those in the dance hall. This recurring deja vu was mildly irritating, but on the other hand...this is a Baz Luhrmann film. I can't blame him for returning to the same themes that appealed to him in a previous movie. After all, Spielberg and Burton and any number of other big directors have been making the same movies for years. We can't help that certain stories appeal to us.
But similarities to Moulin Rouge aside, this was a remarkably true adaptation of one of the most famous works of American literature in existence. One of Baz's trademarks is also the trait that makes his movies so divisive; either you love him or you hate him. I'm talking about the willing suspension of disbelief. This is a principle you talk about in humanities classes--it is the implicit request of the author or director or whoever that you the audience member suspend your awareness of how the real world really is and you instead step into this story and accept the rules that exist here. Most movies cultivate this in their viewers. They attempt to make it as easy as possible for the audience to invest in and submerge themselves in their fictional world. Baz, on the other hand, strives actively to reject it. This is what is so jarring to people who don't love his movies. The fact that things seem so very insincere and theatrical and just plain contrived. Isn't he aware of it? The answer is yes. Yes he is. He did it on purpose. See, the very idea of movies and acting is about playing pretend and building and fantasy between the actors and the audience. At least, that is what it is to Luhrmann (I'd link you to the interviews with him where he basically explains all this but I don't want to hunt them down). So he wants his audience to be aware of what is happening. He is constantly reminding them that this is all a big show, a big game of pretend, in the effort to force them to get involved. They are watching a grand play and their reactions to it are an important part of the overall production. I am one of the people who absolutely love this aspect of Luhrmann's movie-making. And I think that his willingness to acknowledge the falseness, the facade of it all, is what made him possibly the only director who ever possibly could have adapted this specific book--widely deemed "un-filmable"--into a successful movie. Of all its strengths, the text and Fitzgerald's gorgeous use of the English languages is arguably the greatest the book offers. And Luhrmann is the one director who is capable of stopping in the middle of the film to just straight up put that text on screen. Because none of it is real why not acknowledge that the whole thing is coming out of a book? I thought it was fantastic.
As I said, I didn't study the book in high school. I just read it on my own last year. I didn't have anyone forcing me to analyze the symbolism of the book so, while I could see it was there, I didn't really care about it. Obviously the green light was symbolic and probably there were some others and they probably meant something and it was probably really deep and interesting but I'm not picking up on it right away and I just don't really care. When I invited Ben to come see the movie with us he confessed he hadn't read the book and he asked "Is it really such a classic? What is so great about it?" and I'm not going to lie, I told him that to me the reason it is worth reading is solidly the aforementioned elevation of English to true art. I mean, some of the sentences in that book literally made me catch my breath. Like, I had to stop and reread them several times just to luxuriate in their craftsmanship. I told him that was why it was worth reading. The themes and such were fine, but nothing amazing. I know. This is shameful for a literature person like me to admit. Especially when I follow it up with the confession that watching this movie completely changed my mind. Suddenly the symbolism and the allegory and the significance of the thematic development was engrossing. I'll definitely need to watch it several more times to work through it all. And sure, I feel the appropriate shame that I needed the rather heavy hand of Luhrmann to pick up on these things. But on the other hand, I'm going to blasphemously argue that this adaptation, true though it was, actually opened up some new and different analytic options. If nothing else, watching actors color the characters with their own takes on motivations and reactions forces a reevaluation of the characters in this new light. My point is that watching this adaptation opened up the original text to me and I am ok with that.
So what is my final opinion? The Great Gatsby is pure and unadulterated Luhrmann. If you don't like his style then you're not going to like this movie any more than you've liked any of his other films. If you do like his style then you won't be disappointed (equally you won't be surprised...he's not really breaking any new ground). As I've said before, Baz Luhrmann is truly the master of the post-modern pastiche and surrealism. While Moulin Rouge remains my favorite of Baz's movie thusfar, I still can't wait to add Gatsby to my collection.
