A mixed bag

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2013)

Attempting to adapt a literary classic like F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" to the screen is always a tricky proposition. Just ask the makers of the 1974 version who got their rear ends handed to them for their efforts - by both critics and audiences alike. The risk, of course, is that devotees of the work will balk at any attempt to expand or modernize it beyond what is contained on the printed page. After all, great works of literature exist primarily in the individual's imagination, and the way one reader envisions a particular scene or character is likely NOT how another reader - or filmmaker - sees them. The result is that literary adaptations all too often turn into stuffy affairs, with movie makers taking the safest possible approach to the material in an attempt not to offend anyone while still trying to make the piece work in an entirely different medium.
All of this is prelude to saying that when it comes to Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of "The Great Gatsby," regardless of how one feels about the final product, one has to at least admire the chutzpah of the effort. (His trumped-up modernized version of "Romeo and Juliet" similarly divided audiences in the 1990s).
A high school English class staple if ever there was one, the highly prescient "Gatsby," published in 1925, is often considered to be THE archetypal novel of the Roaring '20s, focused on the party-like decadence, conspicuous consumption and spiritual emptiness of a decade sandwiched between a Great War on one end and a Great Depression on the other. At the center of the piece stands Jay Gatsby himself, the self-made millionaire who achieves the American Dream through a combination of dreamy-eyed determination and corrupt opportunism (with much of his wealth gleaned through bootlegging and gangsterism). Yet, for all the wealth and material possessions he's managed to accrue for himself, Gatsby (Leonardo Di Caprio) can never find true happiness until he re-connects with the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), an alluring Southern-belle he fell in love with while still a penniless officer in the army. In the five years since their last encounter, Daisy, who is willing to go a certain distance with a fantasy romance until the going gets too tough for her, has gone on to marry the brutish womanizer Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). Gatsby, in that same period, has bought a mansion across the bay from Daisy's house, hoping against hope that she will one day wander into one of his parties and that they will be able to rekindle their love as if nothing had happened in the interim. It is to this end that he befriends his next door neighbor, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a naïve bondsman from the Midwest, who's moved to New York to make his fortune on Wall Street and who also happens to be Daisy's cousin. It is Nick who narrates the tale (in this version from a sanitarium after suffering a mental breakdown from the trauma of the events he's witnessed), claiming to be an objective observer of what's going on around him, but in reality casting moral judgments on the people he encounters all along the way.
It's easy to understand why the filmmaker was drawn to the material in the first place. With its wild parties and overall air of carefree abandon, the era practically screams out for the Baz Luhrmann treatment. But does the novel? I'm not so sure. The problem is that "The Great Gatsby" is about so much more than just unrestrained partying, and the director (along with his co-writer Craig Rearce) often seems oblivious to that fact. Luhrmann typically drenches his film in all sorts of visual razzmatazz, but the result is that the movie is so over-stylized that the characters are all too often reduced to caricatures and the whole thing to the level of a cartoon. The parties themselves become out-of-control orgies as seen through the lens of Simon Duggan's hurdy-gurdy, hyper-kinetic camera. Meanwhile most of Fitzgerald's nuance and subtlety are wiped away in the phantasmagoria. A case in point is the first appearance of Gatsby in the story. In the novel he literally sneaks up on Nick - and us - as just another anonymous and inconspicuous party guest who engages Nick in conversation. In the movie, his entrance is greeted with a literal display of pyrotechnics. The stylization extends to the décor as well, which often reflects "Alice in Wonderland" more than 1920s Long Island. Nick looks like he lives in an enchanted forest attached to Gatsby's mansion, which has more turrets than Blahousie Castle and manicured grounds that would put the Palace of Versaille to shame.
Viewed another way, however, Luhrmann's approach seems to make a certain amount of sense. The grandiose, over-the-top theatricality, and stiff, yet, at the same time, over-emotive acting are aptly reflective of the silent movies of that era. It's hard to actually evaluate the performances since the actors have clearly been instructed to ham it up as much as possible (especially Edgerton). At times, they come across as little kids engaged in dress-up and playacting. But in the context of this particular film, is that necessarily a bad thing? (I will say that Robert Redford cut a more impressive figure as Gatsby than Di Caprio does here).
And there's one other thing that can be added to the movie's win column: its overall manic energy, which seems a direct attempt to avoid at all costs replicating the mistakes of the heavy, inert 1974 version.
Luhrmann knows that he is treading on sacred ground here and he clearly doesn't care. He's going to give us "The Great Gatsby" as HE envisions it and to hell with the rest of us. In this age of artistic timidity and over-cautious commercial calculation, that attitude turns out to be both admirable and refreshing when you come to think of it.