Flashy adaptation of a seminal American novel

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2014)

Baz Luhrmann has crafted a feast for the eyes and ears in his opulent adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel. Having never read the book, I can't judge the film on its faithfulness to the source material. And also having never seen the 1970's film version with Robert Redford, I can't compare it to that either. So as a standalone film, THE GREAT GATSBY mostly works. Despite from anachronistic soundtrack choices, they still felt in tune with how the 1920's might have seemed to those living in that time period. As for period-appropriate selections, I liked the usage of George Gershwin, particularly "An American in Paris" which serves as a nice reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other members of "The Lost Generation." Visually, the movie is stunning with great attention paid to detail. The only areas I felt lacking was in some of the pacing and the thematic department. The early scenes with parties play fast and hard, with dialogue coming about as fast as one could comprehend it. It is a bit of a head trip, but it wouldn't be so jarring if the movie didn't slow down to a crawl once the melodrama takes over. I also felt that the whole "new money vs. old money" angle could have been explored a little more. As it stands, the film merely scratches the surface of its characters rather than delving in and attempting to understand any of them, except for maybe the titular Gatsby. However, I do think the movie did a good job of portraying excess. Overall, it's stylistically brilliant but the story could have used some more fine-tuning and attempted to explore its characters more than it did for a 130-ish minute movie. Going in, I wasn't expecting too much, but I was pleasantly surprised which made for an enjoyable viewing experience.