Elizabeth Debicki

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2013)

Let me get some minor stuff out of the way first. Even against high expectations, the lavish visuals of the Gatsby parties can still have you gasp (and they are complemented by excellent audio such as Gershwin's ever popular Rhapsody in Blue). The only thing that spoils everything is the criminally irresponsible decision to make the movie in 3D, an insult to the authors (original and screenplay), the art direction people, the actors, and everybody else whose effects deserve something better than distraction from this abominable gimmick. See it in 2D to minimize the damage.
The movie makers displayed good flexibility. The verbal introduction of Gatsby, from Nick Carraway's VO, was a faithful reproduction of the book's text: "(like).intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away". The visual introduction, on the other hand (no pun intended), shows clever re-imagination: while the book described Gatsby's outstretched hand in the dark only as "trembling" the movie shows us a hand that is reaching out, trying to grab something. Another example: the book's description of Doctor T.J. Ecklebury's eyes on the billboard is not blindly (no pun intended) followed – the movie's version, without the spectacles described by the book, is better.
DiCarpio and Mulligan's portrayal of the protagonists are better than just competent. While Daisy as a character is banality personified, Mulligan has brought to it more than it deserves: her own fragile charm. Purportedly an enigma, Gatsby is quite understandable when deconstructed. DiCarpio plays the deconstruction accurately. The detached observer role of Nick Carraway (which has a marked influence on writers who are Fitzgerald admirers, such a Haruki Murakami), "one of the few honest people that I (Carraway) have ever known", is best suited to Toby Maguire, with his child-like innocence and disarming faint smile.
The best character, however, is Jordan Baker. For this role, Paris born and Australia raised Elizabeth Diabecki is heaven-sent. In a magazine interview, this hitherto unknown but decidedly talented young women intimated about the exciting moment when, rehearsing a play in Australia, she got a call from "an American number" informing her that she has won the part of Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann's new film. In talking about her role, she paid tribute to Fitzgerald's writing that is "so specific about the physicality of the characters". Indeed, her physical portrayal of Jordan Baker is pitch-perfect. But Jordan Baker is not just a pretty face, or just an elegant, slender, poised, erect carriage for that matter. To bring her role to live, Diabecki had to go deeper.
Nick's early impressions of Baker are superficial, exemplified by how he perceives the way she walks, as if "she first learn to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings". But he gradually turns his attention to the enigma that is her: "the bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something". This curiosity takes him along the path of mental as well as actual investigation until he finally believes that he has arrived at a conclusion. "She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being in a disadvantage" Nick explains. This appears to be as far as Fitzgerald is ready to go in revealing Jordon Baker but this is only the beginning of the readers' tantalizing speculation of what really makes her tick. Why is this proud woman contented to be a mere sidekick and go-between for Gatsby? Equally tantalizing is the romance, perceived or real, between Baker and Carraway. This pair is far more interesting than Gatsby and Daisy, and we have so little about them, whether in the book or in the movie.
With little material to work on, Diabecki has managed to give us a Baker that is more than one-dimensional (THIS is the real 3D we want!). The most poignant scene, undoubtedly unnoticed by most, is the last time we see Baker and Carraway together, in front of Buchanan house after the fatal accident. This is the only time we sense in her a touch of tenderness and kindness, barely but definitely palpable: she put a hand on Nick's arm and said "Won't you come in Nick". Ironically, this is the only time when he brushed her off and this must have really hurt her, as she "turned abruptly away and ran up the porch steps into the house". That very brief moment is very difficult to act, and Biabecki did well.
The book has a final scene when he met her one more time, to say goodbye. The movie didn't show it and I perfectly understand as "The Great Gatsby" is not about Jordon Baker and Nick Carraway. But I do hope to have seen Maguire and Diabecki acting out this poignant scene.