Getting it Right

Rating: 8/10 (26 April 2014)

I was somewhat put off by the over-the-top trailers that made this version of "Gatsby" look as if it were in the style of a Busby Berkeley musical. Having recently reread the book it was difficult for me to envision the narrative with singers and chorus lines. I'd had mixed reactions to Baz Luhrmann's previous films, really enjoying his "Romeo and Juliet" while "Moulin Rouge" pretty much left me in the cold.
Finally I got around to watching it over HBO on a big screen television and I was more than pleasantly surprised. Of the various versions I've seen, including the 1949 version with Alan Ladd and the 2000 version with Robert Redford, I think this one captures the true spirit of the novel. Ironically the very qualities that had initially put me off are what made it work for me.
Essentially, Fitzgerald's novel embodies the Great American Fairytale. Instead of following the conventions of a period drama Luhrmann, by making use of over-the-top digital technology and a highly exaggerated color palate catapults us into a world of dreams that echoes the overblown expectations of the period that Scott Fitzgerald was portraying. One can readily see the imprint of the Gold Diggers movies of the 30's, the heightened criminality of the prohibition years and the hopeful delusions of a boom that preceded the great crash. Every frame of the movie virtually explodes with the tensions of an intoxicated dream, and this is exactly what Fitzgerald intended to convey in his tale of 'the most hopeful man' his narrator Nick Carroway ever met.
DiCaprio, Mulligan and Maguire are perfect fits for the characters of Gatsby, Daisy and Carroway, able to convey the romantic earnestness of people who are somewhat lost and bewildered by the world in which they find themselves. The most important characters are those of time and place, the vision of a city living in extremes, evoked by the bright furies of Time Square, the devastated wastelands of a Brooklyn slum and the feudal glories of Long Island.
Best of all, there are the most beautiful passages from the book itself, flashed across the screen like the letters on a Wall Street teletype.