***
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a classic, written
with a precise poetry arguably unrivalled in the genre. The novel has survived
the years and become a routine text in the school curriculum, imbedded into the
consciousness of the contemporary. The 1974 interpretation starred Robert Redford
in the iconic role of Jay Gatsby, the love-sick and mysterious American famed
for his large parties and massive wealth. Now, in 2013, Baz Luhrman reunites
with his Romeo, and places Leonardo DiCaprio in the leading role. The scene is
set in New York, 1922, and Nick Carraway has come to the city to make his money
in Wall Street. He moves in next door to the mysterious Gatsby and is soon
lured into his alcohol-fuelled parties and the summertime madness.
The first problem is that when
the characters are put on screen, they instantly become unfavourable – all are
morally reprehensible. This comes across in the novel, too, but somehow the
screen exacerbates their faults, and certainly set me against them. Gatsby is a
liar through and through (you could argue that he has some kind of personality
disorder as he constantly tries to reinvent himself), Tom Buchanan (Joel
Edgerton) is a cheating bastard, and the leading lady, Daisy (Carey Mulligan,
obviously destined for great things) is unutterably frustrating. However,
although I instantly felt distant from these three characters, I was also
intrigued by them and this is down to the excellent acting portrayed by all
three. Mulligan is encapsulates the ‘stupid little girl’ role wonderfully, with
a childlike vulnerability and inexperience that makes her the centre of the
catastrophe. Edgerton is similarly great as her promiscuous husband, gentle and
yet treacherous at the same time. DiCaprio is good too, but I felt that he was
almost swamped by the enormity of the role he was playing, and his screen
presence couldn’t compete with the much more convincing Edgerton. He is slimy,
though, and the scene in which he is reacquainted with Daisy is played
beautifully. Tobey Maguire also gives a solid performance as Nick Carraway, the
only likeable character in the whole thing, but the performances alone cannot
save this film from its deeply rooted problems.
Some will disagree with the
set-up of having Nick Carraway narrate this story from a sanatorium, but I
didn’t feel that this affected the overall story too badly and in fact, it
helped to have a voice guiding us through the madness… and mad it is! At the
beginning of the film, the movements of the actors on screen are jumpy - there
is no smooth movement from one position to the next, but this then dies away and
doesn’t occur again for the rest of the film. It’s an unusual thing to watch, and
I felt that if Luhrman had wanted to use it, he should have used it all the way
through and not just as some kind of experiment at the beginning. In ‘Moulin
Rouge’ we were treated to dance sequences, narrated by a modern soundtrack, and
in ‘The Great Gatsby’ the modern soundtrack is back again, with the likes of ‘Florence
and the Machine’, Lana Del Ray et al, but it doesn’t work. In the party scenes
at Gatsby’s house, I felt that the soundtrack could have worked well with an
ensemble sing and dance routine, but instead the soundtrack felt jarring and
out of place. Similarly, the party scenes feel so jumbled it makes it hard to
watch, although this could be interpreted as America as a whole in the post-war
years. To its credit, the film does sustain an uneasiness throughout, and it
does look rather spectacular, with the green light and yellow car being
especially garish, but this alone is not enough to support a film.
Finally, for all you Leo fans out there – it’s
unlikely that he’ll win the Oscar this year.
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