*/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton
screenplay by Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
directed by Baz Luhrmann
by Walter Chaw The great irony of Baz Luhrmann's
unwatchable farrago The Great Gatsby is that it's not so much an
interpretation of its titular hero's self-aggrandizing fandangos as a
literalization of one. It's all surface, all façade, and not coincidentally,
the most successful thing about it is Luhrmann's shooting of Gatsby's
legendary parties as infernal bacchanalia. But that bit of useful critique
is clearly a fluke, an accident of Luhrmann's one-trick pony kicking over the
single element in Fitzgerald's book that is remotely compatible with Luhrmann's
style. The marriage of Baz with Fitzgerald, in fact, is a little like asking
Michael Bay to adapt The Brothers Karamazov–it's Timur Bekmambetov's A Farewell
to Arms. It's showing off in the loudest, most obnoxious way possible,
without any kind of critical, nay, useful, rationale for all the bread and
circus–an asshole at play with Welles's "best train set a boy could ever
want," with the casualty only what's possibly the best American novel ever
written. It's an effrontery to taste, the sole consolation being that as
Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is something of a motherless child,
there's no one who will love it. No one could.
If you've been to high school, The Great
Gatsby is about poor Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), who befriends
mysterious playboy millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) not knowing that
(the great) Gatsby is interested in Nick's cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan). To
meet her (to be reunited with her, if you must know), Gatsby throws rip-roaring
metaphors for the hedonism of a decade (the '20s) on the brink of the
Great Depression, attended by allegories for materialism run amuck and venality
in all its popular forms. But Daisy doesn't show up until Nick invites her, not
knowing that she's become symbolic of a young nation's idealism (much
like Henry James's Daisy–Miller, not Buchanan) and, in Fitzgerald's cruellest
twist, ultimately representative of a specific bourgeois ennui. The Great
Gatsby counts among its enduring images one of Gatsby reaching out across
the bay that separates him from his inamorata towards the green searchlight at
the end of her dock. Daisy, I forgot to mention, is married to all-American
lunk Tom (Joel Edgerton); there's also stuff about class, xenophobia,
shell-shock and the Great War, and the idea that maybe, just maybe, The
Great Gatsby is the American Iliad–the battle across water,
the empire in tatters, the gods impotent, the prize-Helen imperfect and
treacherous.
If you haven't been to high school, The
Great Gatsby is about a vacuous writer (Nick) committed to a sanatorium and
convinced by his therapist to write his woes, which, at the end of a few hours spent clattering away on a nifty Remington portable in a lamentable framing story,
produces a book he titles, yup, The Great Gatsby. It's about how he
makes friends with a rich guy with a secret who's in love with ephemeral beauty
Daisy; and it's about how it all ends in tears when it turns out Gatsby isn't
what he appears to be, Daisy isn't what she appears to be, Tom is exactly as he
appears to be, and some floozy (Isla Fisher) gets thrown about
forty feet into the air in extreme, ridiculous slow-motion. Also, it's in 3-D, since "gauche" to Baz Luhrmann is merely a waypoint on the way to
"emetic." It's telling that the most emotionally affecting moment of The
Great Gatsby is the part where Fitzgerald's words "So we beat on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" float
onto the screen: more of the CGI that Baz loves, sure sure, but at least in the
service at last to the delicacy of the written word.
The biggest blow to the exquisite prose is to present it without nuance. Not to
compare apples to hammers, but there's a CollegeHumor.com clip circulating of the video for Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" with all its ridiculous images narrated literally ("Arthur Fonzarelli's got
an army of clones (army of clones)"). This The Great Gatsby is
that. It's a director with a specious grasp of the material strip-mining the
text for some idiot purpose. What Fitzgerald spun so carefully has been rendered by Luhrmann into loud, joyless masturbation. Consider this from the first chapter that introduces Daisy:
A breeze blew through the room, blew
curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up
toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the
wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
It's a wondrous passage in a book full of them–one that suggests depths, hints at Gatsby's creation story to come, and underscores themes and a particular mood of romantic melancholia. Under
Luhrmann's hand, the scene becomes gaudy. The "wedding-cake" of a
ceiling is a literalized purple monstrosity of layers and bands, and the
curtains, the "pale flags" that come in and blow out, are a typhoon
of cascading white linen that isn't beautiful so much as frenetic, aggressive,
almost ugly, actually irritating. To say that The Great Gatsby is "unwatchable" is
hyperbolic because you can watch it, of course; what's the word for something
that's so painfully misguided you'd rather not watch it? Regrettable, that's what this is.
All the more so because DiCaprio
makes a very fine Gatsby. At this stage in his career, he finds himself capable
of conveying regret, ambition, and, crucially, hope. Maguire reprises his
performance from Wonder Boys and Mulligan continues to take the
winsome sad roles that Michelle Williams turns down. They're trapped in the
film in the same way that Gatsby's essential hopefulness is trapped in the
flight of his fancies and affectations–possibly-interesting performances made
role-players by Luhrmann forever upstaging them, and occasionally made
unintentionally hilarious because Luhrmann's style confuses pathos with
slapstick. Ultimately, the less said about the use of African-Americans as
Greek Chorus the better. What is there to say about it, anyway, except that
while it's possible to pull this off (see: Elia Kazan's Baby Doll), Luhrmann
ain't the guy to do it–whether or not Jay-Z produced the film. (He did, and cameos
as well in another nonsensical image.) The Great Gatsby is
terrible–that much is expected, I suppose. The real tragedy is that the experiencing
of it is akin to watching something beautiful drown: trapped in garish amber,
eternally visible, eternally suffering.
“there’s no one who will love it. No one could.”
What about those of us who love obviously doomed, wrongheaded fiascos? Because I’ve been looking forward to this movie since I heard about it.
“there’s no one who will love it. No one could.”
What about those of us who love obviously doomed, wrongheaded fiascos? Because I’ve been looking forward to this movie since I heard about it.
“there’s no one who will love it. No one could.”
What about those of us who love obviously doomed, wrongheaded fiascos? Because I’ve been looking forward to this movie since I heard about it.
If Luhrmann gets to do another movie, hope he tries a musical remake of Bergman’s “Persona” with Pink and Christina Aguilera as the leads.
If Luhrmann gets to do another movie, hope he tries a musical remake of Bergman’s “Persona” with Pink and Christina Aguilera as the leads.
If Luhrmann gets to do another movie, hope he tries a musical remake of Bergman’s “Persona” with Pink and Christina Aguilera as the leads.
This is, as expected, sad: Luhrmann’s over-the-top aesthetic seems to, once again, have trumped the substance of his material. I will still see it, I am sure. I need to see where the film goes wrong for myself. I admit that I am leery of DiCaprio portraying Gatsby; I hope he really can carry the weight of that emblematic character.
This is, as expected, sad: Luhrmann’s over-the-top aesthetic seems to, once again, have trumped the substance of his material. I will still see it, I am sure. I need to see where the film goes wrong for myself. I admit that I am leery of DiCaprio portraying Gatsby; I hope he really can carry the weight of that emblematic character.
This is, as expected, sad: Luhrmann’s over-the-top aesthetic seems to, once again, have trumped the substance of his material. I will still see it, I am sure. I need to see where the film goes wrong for myself. I admit that I am leery of DiCaprio portraying Gatsby; I hope he really can carry the weight of that emblematic character.
I wish you weren’t married, Walter.
I wish you weren’t married, Walter.
I wish you weren’t married, Walter.
Hahah! And YES! And whaaaat? And Let me go look that word up. Oh, Walter. I enjoyed reading your review SO much more than I liked seeing The Great Gatsby. . . .
Hahah! And YES! And whaaaat? And Let me go look that word up. Oh, Walter. I enjoyed reading your review SO much more than I liked seeing The Great Gatsby. . . .
Hahah! And YES! And whaaaat? And Let me go look that word up. Oh, Walter. I enjoyed reading your review SO much more than I liked seeing The Great Gatsby. . . .
I’m more or less in complete agreement with this review, particularly your assessment of DiCaprio.
Several times during the film, when Gatsby is reminiscing about Daisy or fervently hoping to make the past the future (not that it matters because it’s one and the same), DiCaprio seemed to bring forward in time the youth and hope of 1917 Gatz to 1922 Gatsby’s face. Then the expression disappears and the viewer is left only with 1922 Gatsby.
So yeah, DiCaprio was at the ideal stage in his career to play Gatsby, and more’s the pity that his performance was wasted.
I’m more or less in complete agreement with this review, particularly your assessment of DiCaprio.
Several times during the film, when Gatsby is reminiscing about Daisy or fervently hoping to make the past the future (not that it matters because it’s one and the same), DiCaprio seemed to bring forward in time the youth and hope of 1917 Gatz to 1922 Gatsby’s face. Then the expression disappears and the viewer is left only with 1922 Gatsby.
So yeah, DiCaprio was at the ideal stage in his career to play Gatsby, and more’s the pity that his performance was wasted.
I’m more or less in complete agreement with this review, particularly your assessment of DiCaprio.
Several times during the film, when Gatsby is reminiscing about Daisy or fervently hoping to make the past the future (not that it matters because it’s one and the same), DiCaprio seemed to bring forward in time the youth and hope of 1917 Gatz to 1922 Gatsby’s face. Then the expression disappears and the viewer is left only with 1922 Gatsby.
So yeah, DiCaprio was at the ideal stage in his career to play Gatsby, and more’s the pity that his performance was wasted.
Right about the film, wrong about DiCaprio … Great actors can still be great in stinking pieces of shit like this. He’s not a great actor, he’s a model who has learned how to “show” he has emotions. Don’t pity him for being in this… Now If only Scorsese could have bet on a better pony so many years ago, his career would not have become such a joke.
Right about the film, wrong about DiCaprio … Great actors can still be great in stinking pieces of shit like this. He’s not a great actor, he’s a model who has learned how to “show” he has emotions. Don’t pity him for being in this… Now If only Scorsese could have bet on a better pony so many years ago, his career would not have become such a joke.
Right about the film, wrong about DiCaprio … Great actors can still be great in stinking pieces of shit like this. He’s not a great actor, he’s a model who has learned how to “show” he has emotions. Don’t pity him for being in this… Now If only Scorsese could have bet on a better pony so many years ago, his career would not have become such a joke.