Skip to main content

The Great Gatsby review: Baz Luhrmann's film is as shallow as spilt champagne

 

The Great Gatsby (12A)

Rating:

Baz Luhrmann was precisely the wrong director to shoot F.  Scott Fitzgerald’s small but perfectly formed American novel. With the opposite of the Midas touch, he has transformed a book of class, subtlety and sophistication into a frenzied folly, with the heartfelt emotion of a Las Vegas floorshow.

Luhrmann lovingly titivates the fake and superficial, and never gets round to serving the meat of the novel, which involves  cutting into sham and heartlessness.

It’s not all terrible. Luhrmann is in his element at Long Island parties of the Roaring Twenties, and invests them with glitz, glamour and more than a hint of decadence. He and his designer wife, Catherine Martin, are connoisseurs of kitsch.

Louche living: Gatsby stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan

It’s too bad he is tone-deaf when dealing with nuanced human emotions or tragedy. Too much of the film goes for over-the-top, operatic effect when it needs to go for the intimate. The actors pose like models for a fashion spread. They are, of course, beautifully lit. What’s missing is the light behind their eyes.

Luhrmann’s flamboyantly anachronistic style used pop music to energise William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet and 19th-century Paris in Moulin Rouge.

The musical choices here — by Luhrmann himself and rapper Jay-Z — don’t work. The incorporation of modern hip-hop undermines the sense of period and distances the audience.

Luhrmann does understand the book intellectually and brings out its themes. He even addresses the central problem of dramatising the novel — it lacks a hero — by trying to turn it into a rites-of-passage for the author/ narrator.

  More... Model entrances: Cara Delevingne and Georgia May Jagger lead the glamour in plunging floorlength dresses at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival Opening Ceremony The Great Gatsby golden couple: Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan look every inch the red carpet pair at photo call in Cannes ahead of opening gala

Luhrmann has invented a framing device to top and tail the film. In this, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a depressed, middle-aged alcoholic in a sanatorium (like Fitzgerald towards the end of his life) is encouraged by his therapist to write a book about his memories of the Twenties.

These centre on Nick’s mysterious neighbour on Long Island. Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) throws enormous parties in a vast castle, but no one is sure how he’s made his fortune or where he comes from.

Gatsby befriends Nick, who is flattered even when he discovers that the millionaire has an ulterior motive: he wishes to get back together with Nick’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a society beauty Gatsby loved before the war.

High society: Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Debicki

She didn’t wait for him and married America’s richest bachelor, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), a polo-playing bully, boor and bigot, who fathered her daughter and now plays around with other women, especially a local garage owner’s promiscuous wife (Isla Fisher).

Nick is lured into the upper-class milieu, only to become disenchanted by its lack of any emotions higher than lust and greed. Unlike Gatsby, he eventually realises that Daisy is as careless and  materialistic as her husband.

By the end, we’re meant to feel, as Nick does, that Gatsby had ‘an extraordinary gift for hope’ and felt more deeply  than any of his contemporaries.

DiCaprio certainly discovers Gatsby’s glamour, vulnerability and ruthlessness, but he’s as deep as spilt champagne. It’s hard to share his passion for Daisy or believe that his romantic tactics will achieve anything but failure.

This is partly because Carey  Mulligan — a clever and talented young actress — never quite entrances as Daisy. Submerged beneath over-the-top art direction and subdued by Edgerton’s bludgeoning performance as her spouse, she is little more than a pretty girl with an attractive nose.

The absence of any feeling for her small daughter — a lack of responsibility equally manifest in her two beaux — makes her superficial from the outset. When her vacuity is brutally exposed in the final act, it comes as no surprise.

The reason the film has never been a hit despite being filmed six times is that it lacks any character to feel deeply about.

Nick is annoyingly passive, a hollow man — an onlooker, not a protagonist — and an off-form Tobey Maguire makes him an opaque, uncharismatic and unobservant cipher. Daisy’s a spoiled little rich girl. Gatsby’s charismatic but delusional. 

In a novel, the reader can imagine himself as Nick and be fascinated by the wealth of Gatsby, the allure of Daisy. On screen, that is more difficult to bring off.

No one has managed it yet.

I was a fan of Luhrmann’s early work — Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge. I was even entertained by Australia, his overblown tribute to Gone With The Wind and his own home nation.

He is never boring, and there’s no doubt about his intelligence and flair. There is, however, a gigantic question mark hanging over his taste.

One is left with the horrible suspicion that Luhrmann’s remake of The King’s Speech would involve fire-breathing jugglers, a thousand screaming drag queens and a million rampaging wildebeest.

&

Popular posts from this blog

Study Abroad USA, College of Charleston, Popular Courses, Alumni

Thinking for Study Abroad USA. School of Charleston, the wonderful grounds is situated in the actual middle of a verifiable city - Charleston. Get snatched up by the wonderful and customary engineering, beautiful pathways, or look at the advanced steel and glass building which houses the School of Business. The grounds additionally gives students simple admittance to a few major tech organizations like Amazon's CreateSpace, Google, TwitPic, and so on. The school offers students nearby as well as off-grounds convenience going from completely outfitted home lobbies to memorable homes. It is prepared to offer different types of assistance and facilities like clubs, associations, sporting exercises, support administrations, etc. To put it plainly, the school grounds is rising with energy and there will never be a dull second for students at the College of Charleston. Concentrate on Abroad USA is improving and remunerating for your future. The energetic grounds likewise houses various

Best MBA Online Colleges in the USA

“Opportunities never open, instead we create them for us”. Beginning with this amazing saying, let’s unbox today’s knowledge. Love Business and marketing? Want to make a high-paid career in business administration? Well, if yes, then mate, we have got you something amazing to do!   We all imagine an effortless future with a cozy house and a laptop. Well, well! You can make this happen. Today, with this guide, we will be exploring some of the top-notch online MBA universities and institutes in the USA. Let’s get started! Why learn Online MBA from the USA? Access to More Options This online era has given a second chance to children who want to reflect on their careers while managing their hectic schedules. In this, the internet has played a very crucial in rejuvenating schools, institutes, and colleges to give the best education to students across the globe. Graduating with Less Debt Regular classes from high reputed institutes often charge heavy tuition fees. However onl

Sickening moment maskless 'Karen' COUGHS in the face of grocery store customer, then claims she doesn't have to wear a mask because she 'isn't sick'

A woman was captured on camera following a customer through a supermarket as she coughs on her after claiming she does not need a mask because she is not sick.  Video of the incident, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter alone, allegedly took place in a Su per Saver in Lincoln, Nebraska according to Twitter user @davenewworld_2. In it, an unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of the customer recording her. Scroll down for video An unidentified woman was captured dramatically coughing as she smiles saying 'Excuse me! I'm coming through' in the direction of a woman recording her A woman was captured on camera following a customer as she coughs on her in a supermarket without a mask on claiming she does not need one because she is not sick @chaiteabugz #karen #covid #karens #karensgonewild #karensalert #masks we were just wearing a mask at the store. ¿ o