Impiety

Rating: 1/10 (30 May 2013)

To walk through the Musee du Louvre and to micturate upon the works of da Vinci, Van Gogh, and Picasso, would compel penectomy as punishment. Yet what has Baz Luhrmann, in his film, The Great Gatsby 3D, done to F.Scott Fitzgerald? And how has the world punished this impious Baztard? It has given him one-hundred and thirty million non-Australian dollars in box office receipts as of May 28th. Such are the economic mysteries of the world--why does money obsessively search out the stupid?
The extent of profaning and desecration is evidence of a mob. But conspiracies are not composed of one. The casting director is a member. There are two such that blame may be diffused--Nikki Barrett and Ronna Kress. A critic may only speculate as to the extent of analingus performed by whom upon whom for the role of Meyer Wolfsheim being given to Amitabh Bachchan. I understand the audience is required to have a level of suspension of disbelief. But the level that is asked in The Great Gatsby 3D is schizophrenia or a level achieved by those who have had ice pick lobotomies. Because of his experience in portraying characters of such depth as Spiderman in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Tobey Maguire was given the role of the deepest character, after Gatsby, in Nick Carraway. Mr. Maguire did not fail to show the full two millimeters of depth, piercing the top layer of the epidermis, that he is capable of. He plays the sober Nick Carraway as a bona fide Toby Belch. And why would Carey Mulligan be Daisy Buchanan, when KH is the fatale described to the letter by F.Scott Fitzgerald? It is the voice of Daisy, the sound of money, the voice of a siren that summons a sailor to his death. Miss Mulligan's voice is as beckoning and alluring as an unsolicited, automated telemarketing pitch for life insurance. How many mulligans can be gracefully allowed to this casting director duo? Apparently at least one more because who is Gatsby but Leonardo di Caprio. There is not an iota of facetiousness in Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby. Unfulfilled dreams are sullen and serious in essence. There are plans formed and executed to achieve improbable ends. Nothing is random happenstance. Mr. Capricious, without wearing a buffoon's red nose and a clown's white face paint, makes Gatsby into a whimsical wag. I run out to my balcony and indignantly shout, "How can this be?" There are no echoes; there are no voices answering. According to the pigeon hole principle, if you are casting enow straws you will eventually find the right actor for some part by a process of exhaustion. They did. A two-fisted caveman, Joel Edgerton lives a true Tom Buchanan. Ostensibly, Mr. Edgerton might have read the un-pirated Scribner edition of The Great Gatsby.