Baz Luhrman's style restrains the true drama and meaning

Rating: 6/10 (10 June 2013)

The Goods The visuals were nice, the party being a highlight of course. The wonderful Carey Mulligan was superb at the best of times, the highlight for me being her garden. Some of the music touched on parallels between modern day and the past, and worked on occasion.
The Bad The obscure vision kept an uncomfortable distance between the audience and the true potential of the film, grinding down to a shallow 'Virginia Woolf' style train-wreck, which has it's merits, but pales in contrast to the true point of the story. For me, what the film should have been trying to do was put more emphasis on 'decent men in an indecent time' and vice-versa.
Nick Carroway's perspective carried little weight from the opening scene, being almost nothing more than an empty spectator/ a device of storytelling. And the distance between the characters and any real definition created a domino effect, making attempts at intimacy bizarre, and every 'old sport' pathetic. From the point of Tom Buchanan's house, things were clearly not going to change - making a large novelty-esque sketch of life in that period, rather than approaching the characters in a noire gritty style, with Gatsby's fascade as the relief.
The musical ideas brought some interest, but were ultimately poorly conceived, and simply added to the chaos. Luhrman's Moulin Rouge was evidently perfect for his style, but trying to apply the same 'lense' to a dramatic piece like this simply distorts what could have been a much better connection to the true themes of the original story. Reading the book will give you a much more refined sense of the personalities which were to a large degree lost and jaded in the film.