Excessive extravagance hits home

Rating: 8/10 (13 October 2013)

Baz Luhrmann's excessive all-out retelling of the great American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, where the essence of the 1920s lavish parties is juxtaposed with hip-hop and dub-step music channelling the excess, is a surprisingly satisfying feature. Equally shocking is how the outdated story fits so seamlessly with the current Wall Street culture of greed and obnoxiousness. When a youthful writer Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) decides on a stock exchange career he rents a small beach-side place, hence becoming the unknowing neighbour of Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). Soon the duo become comrades with Carraway being pulled into the nouveau riche lifestyle of glitz and cascades of cash. However Gatsby has an ulterior motive to reclaim the love of his life: Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a high-life dame married to local class royalty Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). For her this small town boy has amassed wealth in the hope that one day Daisy's heart will be reconquered.
For once Baz Luhrmann's liking to the extravagant feels wholly at home with luscious expansive setting and mass choreography making the spectacle seem suitably epic for the story. A far cry from the autoparodic "Australia" Luhrman's style seems to mesh perfectly with the sensibility of the story and his decision to introduce contemporary black music works brilliantly - symbolically drawing similarities as the current culture associated with the overblown excess of rappers so aptly fits to the fatuitous societal bliss of 1920s wealth. Despite the screenplay being as faithful as possible to the source material, the outlook on America as a culture of mindless wealth seems ever so timely.
Leanardo DiCaprio is a tour de force in his own right, now fully formed as an adult actor drawing away from his youthful appearance, which made him once seem like the eternal boy-actor. Tobey Maguire seems the weakest point of the movie, as he fails to serve any sense of credibility to his character, overly reclusive and grey, not bringing a background impact as the narrator of Gatsby downfall. Given that this is essentially Nick's story to tell I couldn't help but feel that Maguire struggles with making himself a key figure in the proceedings, instead molding into the background of the deluxe surroundings, struggling as a first person perspective narrator. This does make the movie a bit more ineffectual in its impact, but mostly it just underpins DiCaprio's command of his role and diverts all attention to the Great Gatsby!