"THE GREAT GATSBY"
Based upon the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Screenplay Written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
**** (four stars)
As I have stated over again ever since the inception of Savage Cinema in regards to film adaptations of literature, books are books and movies are movies When I say that, I am just expressing that when it comes to film adaptations, it is up to the filmmaker in question to determine exactly how to simultaneously represent and honor the source material through the language of the movies and through their own creative voice. This is indeed a profoundly difficult feat as I have also said that when you read a book, you have already made the movie inside of your own heads and hearts, therefore anything that doesn't quite match up will always feel inferior at best and completely false at worst.
Typically, if I do read the source material on which a film is based, more often than not, and if I have not already read the book, I will read the novel after the film. I am very able to keep the two experiences wholly separate quite easily that way. But when I have read the novel beforehand, my relationships with the film versions can fluctuate, regardless of the film's overall quality. For instance, and believe it or not, I absolutely hate, hate, hate Director Robert Mulligan's 1962 cinematic adaptation of author Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. My distaste actually does not stem from my love for the novel. My distaste exists entirely through the Mulligan's presentation, which altered the story's perspective from the child Scout to the adult Atticus Finch, which for me completely changed the overall point and vision of the source material into something the story is not really about in the first place. While this film has been long celebrated as being one of the GREAT films, and a point I am not trying to debate anyone about, that stylistic change was indeed a filmmaker's artistic choice in rendering the written material visually and for generations, that vision has held steadfast, while for me, it has not.
I understand the conflict and difficulties at hand of literary film adaptations and because of that, I am not and will not be surprised to see how film critics and viewers may cry foul at Director Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, a book that is not only a generational standard in High School English classes, but is also a novel that is considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest piece of literature ever realized. Like so many of you, I have read and adored the novel and Fitzgerald is indeed one of my favorite writers. That being said, I have not read The Great Gatsby in, perhaps, nearly 25 years, so my memories of it and feelings towards it are scant at best. Because of that, I believe my lack of literary recall placed me at a cinematic advantage when heading into a screen of Baz Luhrmann's film this afternoon as I could just walk in without any pre-conceived notions of what I was going to see and what I thought I should be seeing and feeling. I could walk into the film prepared to witness Baz Luhrmann's interpretation almost unfiltered and for me and my sensibilities, I was deeply enraptured by the experience as Lurhmann not only honored the source material greatly, he defiantly executed his vision, his way and through his cinematic voice with high style and voluminous emotion. This has been one of the most impressive films I have seen so far this year and I think that if you really give this film an honest chance, I think that you will be as equally impressed, dazzled and as moved as I was.
As with the classic source material, Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" is set during the roaring early 1920s, just outside of New York on the fictional locale of West Egg. We are introduced to Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire),Yale graduate, World War 1 veteran and aspiring bond broker who takes up residence in a small cottage on West Egg and a job in New York as a bond salesman. Nick quickly re-establishes a friendship with his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), who lives in the exuberantly wealthy East Egg with her husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), a businessmen who is secretly philandering with Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), a woman who lives in the dilapidated industrial area between East Egg and New York City.
After being befriended by the glamorous yet romantically cynical golfer Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debecki) and strongly encouraged by Daisy, Nick and Jordan begin dating and Nick soon discovers that he is living just next door to the monstrously wealthy and mysteriously enigmatic Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), another war veteran who habitually stages the grandest and most elaborate parties exclusively for the hoi poloi. Nick soon receives an invitation into one of Jay Gatsby's parties, eventually meets him and begins to build a friendship where he learns that Gatsby and Daisy shared a brief affair just before the war and were separated due to Gatsby's military duties. Now, five years later, Gatsby continues to carry an inextinguishable torch for Daisy and has created these wild events with the hopes that one day, she will return to him.
And now, as Jay Gatsby attempts to reclaim his past, Nick Carraway finds himself at the center of a collective of facades, unspoken desires and motives, painful secrets and revelations which build to a tragic climax which may unravel the identities and perceptions of everyone close to him, and perhaps even himself.
As I stated at the outset of this review, books are books and movies are movies and while there is no question whatsoever as to the greatness of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, I am here to say that I felt that Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation was truly terrific, and easily one of the brightest lights of cinema that I have seen in this otherwise dismal cinematic year so far. There has already been copious amounts of criticism launched against Baz Luhrmann for his extravagant directorial style overall and especially in regards to this material and to that, I denounce all of it as I find it as ridiculous as it is completely disheartening. As with detractors of filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, Baz Luhrmann is being criticized for utilizing his personal, signature filmmaking style and I just have to question exactly what is so wrong about Luhrmann having a personal stamp over the films that he chooses to make. Are people actually suggesting that he had directed "The Great Gatsby" as if he were someone other than himself, perhaps like Woody Allen or Noah Baumbach?! I do not mean to digress but I just do not understand how we have arrived at this point in cinematic film history where filmmakers are actually being encouraged by some to become impersonal and even anonymous. Why was Tim Burton not raked over the coals for being absolutely nowhere in sight with his abysmal "Alice In Wonderland" (2010)? Or how about Sam Raimi, who was also rendered nearly invisible with his bloated, impersonal "Oz The Great And Powerful"? Or worst of all, what about Joseph Kosinki, who with the horrendous "Oblivion," has essentially decided to emulate every science fiction filmmaker before him without placing even one idea of his own into the mix?
What I am getting at is the following: When Baz Luhrmann chooses to make a new film, then I want to see Baz Luhrmann make his film! And with "The Great Gatsby," Luhrmann's vision is front and center, just as it should be. While the allure of the novel has been powerful enough to have inspired past filmmakers to try and adapt it, what I did not realize before heading into this film is that Baz Luhrmann is now the sixth filmmaker to tackle F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel and for my money, he handled the entire proceedings with high confidence, stupendous style, "don't-look-back" velocity, an enormous heart and completely without apology. As with his past films, which have included "Strictly Ballroom" (1992), "Romeo + Juliet" (1996) and of course, the outstanding "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), you will either go with the experience or you won't. And also as with his past films, I went with it completely.
Also, and despite some of the criticism you may have already seen, "The Great Gatsby" is not nearly as hyper-kinetic and helter skelter as "Moulin Rouge!". Yes, your senses will be assaulted but I firmly believe that Luhrmann is truly one of the few filmmakers working today who can elicit this grandiose style of filmmaking with a full adherence to the story he is trying to tell and assure the audience that none of his razzle dazzle will exist at the expense of the story, the characters and the soul of the piece. With "The Great Gatsby," I feel that Luhrmann is completely within his element as he makes daring cinematic choices that all felt to be emotionally true even they seem to be at their most synthetic.
The controversial usage of hip hop music in combination with jazz music to represent the style and decadence of New York during the "Jazz Age" for instance worked perfectly and never felt to be out of place. The costume and set designs and the eye popping visual effects rendered the kaleidoscopic carnival of the story heroically, giving us one of the rare movies this year where the special effects are indeed special and nothing to yawn at. Luhrmann works his film's color scheme like that of a painter, utilizing tools of the movies and the the silver screen as his paints, brushes and canvas. The yellow of Jay Gatsby's car, for instance sparkles like the sun. The green harbor light, which Gatsby longingly stares at across the waters, an act which houses his eternal devotion and hope for Daisy's romantic return, perfectly captured his heartache. Throughout the entirety of "The Great Gatsby," you can see every penny upon the screen and every moment feels thought out and helmed with the fullest of intent and purpose.
As I watched "The Great Gatsby," The Who's classic song "Eminence Front," periodically ran through my mind as Luhrmann crucially captured one of Fitzgerald's key theme's very effectively as essentially every character in the film is living a life through a wholly conceived and cultivated filter, a public persona of an imagined creation, something that masks their true feelings as desires for what they really want out of life. Therefore, they are all living lives of illusion. Jay Gatsby's facade takes things further. Even though he may have built his persona through something that is as seemingly pure as true love, is the woman he is in love with a person who actually exists or is Daisy just a memory or even nothing less than a long running perception of the woman he used to know before the war?
Leonardo DiCaprio is absolutely perfect in the titular role and again shows why he is one of the finest actors of his generation as he so brilliantly displays a sense of public aloofness, elegant attractiveness and high class which increases his public status as an enigma yet hides not only his true identity but also his deepest pains, darkest fears and repressed rage. His entrance into the film is as spectacular spectacular as you would hope to see as he is surrounded by blasts of fireworks and the blaring music of George Gershwin. And as the film continues, DiCaprio beautifully peels back the layers, revealing bits and pieces of Gatsby's identity like bread crumbs and we all sit at attention just waiting for more. But it is through his private pain, his awkwardness, his increasing romantic desperation and pie in the sky optimism that brings out Gatsby's tragic nature and DiCaprio handles it all with his usual excellence.
Carey Mulligan may initially seem as if she has little to do but to be the trapped butterfly under glass, but in Luhrmann's film, that is indeed who Daisy Buchanan happens to be and the tragedy of her fate rests completely with the fact that her sense of imprisonment is one of her own making. Daisy's desire for money and splendor has clouded and even eclipsed her true spirit and love for Jay Gatsby making her a character who has chosen to sacrifice her own sense of happiness and ultimately her sense of self-respect for the luxury and imagined security of her life with Tom. Luhrmann utilizes the love triangle of Jay, Daisy and Tom to create a love story that is not only doomed but more expansively one of being unrequited as well as one of possessiveness, obsessiveness and of pure imagination.
The theme of imagination rises over and again throughout the film, which again serves to validate Lurhmann's directorial choices and artistic vision. For all of the characters, this 1920's New York is indeed nothing more than a dream world viewed through the lens of alcohol and excess and why should it not look as such? As unknowable as the real new York is in this context and the questions of who is Jay Gatsby runs abound, I felt that the film's larger and even greatest question and almost unanswerable question is the following: Who is Nick Carraway?
The Nick Carraway character and Tobey Maguire's strong performance of him actually gives Luhrmann the opportunity to make his most daring interpretations as he has made Nick psychologically unstable and he is even described as being "morbidly alcoholic" and given to "fits of rage." This decision to imagine him as someone whose psyche is damaged, makes Nick Carraway a completely unreliable narrator as we are witnessing his memories as if they were nothing more than dreams from his past, which can be altered and re-shaped depending upon which way his mood swings. We discover early on that he had housed desires to be a writer but gave them up for the pursuit of riches. Yet this ability to create, to weave, to imagine fuels his re-telling of his time in 1922 New York and we must ask ourselves exactly how true is what he is telling us and how true is what we are seeing. How is it that he is not terribly complicit in the fates of these characters? Was he really essentially nothing more than an observer to the decadence of a society or was he the primary catalyst for the characters collective destruction and is he burying that guilt through the flashy descriptions of Gatsby's parties and New York lifestyle? What Baz Luhrmann has performed so wondrously is to create a film that is entirely about the unreliability of memories and our ability to re-contextualize those memories for no other purpose than to maintain our own sense of self preservation, an act which makes Nick Carraway probably the most enigmatic figure of all within this story.
While I am certain that Baz Luhrmann desires to have his film appreciated and loved by as many people around the world as possible, just like any other artist, I am also certain that "The Great Gatsby" is not for everyone. And frankly, why should it? This desire for mass appeal at the expense of a personal voice and artistic vision is a painfully misguided one and I am thrilled that Luhrmann did not temper his tastes, style and artistry in the pursuit of box office dollars. When we go to see a Baz Luhrmann film, we all know what we are getting from him and if his style is not your cup of tea, then that not only should be perfectly fine, he should be celebrated for it as well as a creative voice that is as idiosyncratic and as individualistic as his is sadly of increased rarity these days.
"The Great Gatsby" is not only a welcome addition to Baz Luhrmann's filmography, for me, it is one of the finest films of 2013.
SAVAGE POSTSCRIPT:
Just a word of curiosity and caution. The screening that I attended at my local Sundance Cinema was one that was excessively LOUD to the point of being painful. After speaking with an usher, I was told that many patrons have complained about the film's loudness and they were having difficulties trying to regulate the sound. Now, I have no idea of whether this was how the film was mixed, if this was Luhrmann's intention or if it was just due to this theater but when you do see this film, you may want to take some ear plugs, just in case.
Let me know how it was for you...
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