Not as good as we'd hoped, but not as bad as we thought

Rating: 7/10 (11 July 2013)

Everyone acquainted with great, classic American literature knows that F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is an artfully subtle, quietly philosophical character-driven piece that charms readers mostly with its elegance and with its air of mystery and tragedy. Everyone acquainted with popular Australian cinema knows that Baz Lhurmann's films entertain mostly with their novel excesses and their frenetic alternations between comedy and tragedy. However, the results of Lhurmann setting out to adapt this treasured novel along with co- screenwriter Craig Pearce, who penned each film of the Red Curtain trilogy, are surprisingly more successful than one might expect.
On several points, the director's showmanship actually seems very appropriate, mostly as he depicts the colourful, decadent, indulgent world of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (played very sensitively by Leonardo DiCaprio) whose penchant for the extravagant is as great as Lhurmann's. The scenes inside his colossal, noisy, lavishly decorated mansion bursting with uninvited partygoers from all walks of life give Lhurmann a plausible excuse to use his characteristic frenetic editing, dress hundreds of extras in bright, sparkly costumes, blast out techno- beat dance music and bedazzle us with explosions of loud colours. In its way, these scenes are equally if not more effective at pulling us into the outrageously vibrant world of the excited, optimistic, childlike title character when compared with the original novel. The anachronistic music might be jarring, but I doubt that a party scene using vintage 1920s jazz certainly would have made me feel as wild and electric and as though I were a part of the late night celebrations myself.
The soundtrack works even better in the first scene of drunken indulgence, where we see Gatsby's normally well-behaved next-door neighbour Nick Carroway (Tobey Maguire) being literally dragged into a smaller-scale but still riotous celebration by his brutish acquaintance Tom Buchanan (a strikingly conceited Joel Edgerton). A very psychedelic shot of Nick, our narrator and technically our protagonist, observing his own ridiculous behaviour high up in an apartment building from the street below is a rare moment where Lhurmann's stylised visuals manage to communicate some of the complexities of Fitzgerald's celebrated prose. When they're not clearly satirising modern society, they might be adding to key narrative points melodrama that is either engaging or sickeningly alienating, or the camera-work might just be taking us on a bit of a roller-coaster. I did get a little tired of the camera's hyperactivity after a while, but fortunately the cinematographic sugar high is done with after half an hour.
The melodrama that comes through afterwards mostly works because the story is, at least on some level, about extremes. If Gatsby and Tom's sweet mistress, Myrtle Wilson (a surprisingly good Isla Fisher) are the lovable fools with an absurd amount of faith in their far-fetched plans – Myrtle desperately hopes that she will be whisked away from her dim, primitive husband (a very poignant Jason Clarke) by a richer dim, primitive husband, Tom –then most of the other characters are either shallow fools or shallow villains. There is no question that the beefy, cocky, controlling, white supremacist Tom is our villain, who in the end becomes truly diabolical. Elizabeth Debicki exudes confident stealth and superficiality as Jordan Baker, seemingly the most streetwise female character but who is ultimately as much of a blunderer as the two hapless romantics, Myrtle and Gatsby. Curiously, though as the beautiful but shallow damsel Daisy Buchanan, the plot-driving object of desire, Lhurmann has cast the captivating Carey Mulligan, who of course endows Daisy with the remarkable emotional depth that she does so well. This fooled me into thinking that Daisy was actually a person of substance, despite her actions, or lack thereof.
The character of Nick Carroway is equally thin. In the novel, he is the everyman who, with the exception of the poignant ending in which he becomes an active presence, only exists to witness or catch wind of all the exciting events and give us a cohesive story,
In translating Nick to the medium of film, Pearce and Lhurmann add very little, if any, depth of character to him. Lhurmann's direction to Maguire seems to have been little more than to act like a wide-eyed grinning puppy dog cheerily excited by all the serious emotional conflicts around him. At this, Maguire does excel, but if they also wanted him to be an engaging narrator, they should have hired someone with a bit more of a range. The film relies heavily on a voice-over from a weary, crazed Nick who recounts the story in flashback, sitting at his typewriter in the office of a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, our little link is not lovable enough to enliven one of the most overused of all cinematic storytelling methods. His deadpan voice-over sucks the life out of Fitzgerald's beautiful prose.
Fortunately, though, the butchered narration is occasionally improved with the very striking visual motif of displaying wispy clumps of ashes that shape the words that Maguire is sleepily reciting. Another of the many visual treats is the design of the dismal coal district which is directly in front of the glitzy, colourful wealthy district that is sustained by the hard, manual labour of the lowlier urban dwellers. A large optometrist's billboard containing a giant eye is situated right in the centre of this district, and is frequently cut to as a symbol of the sense of truth and morality that the largely immoral characters turn to at their convenience.
The 1974 Gatsby film adaptation is widely considered to be a very accurate, but ultimately soulless cinematic retelling of what is superficially a very dull story, so I suppose that going spectacularly against the tone of the novel was a more likely way to get to its heart. I'm not quite sure that all of the experimental theatrics really give us a new appreciation of the original work, but they are certainly offset by the many solid performances from the key players.