I wanted to get up and slap Baz Luhrmann on the back.

Rating: 9/10 (10 June 2013)

For giving us an almost perfect adaptation of The Great Gatsby while being a very fine film on its own, and yet people still complain and the critics keep being too hard on him.
For those who say Luhrmann's Gatsby is "style over substance", did we even watch the same movie? Luhrmann certainly has matured since his Romeo+Juliet days. This is something else. Somehow the music works really well. I have never seen music being used this effectively in a movie before, it really sets the mood and it actually helps the storytelling. I'm ready to call Baz a genius for the choice of music alone. The camera work is stunning. The visual is, no question, beautiful and breathtaking and everything. But most importantly, the script is neat. The pacing is tight. I personally love the decision to put Nick in a sanitarium and make him tell the story from there. You see, it's not easy to translate the book The Great Gatsby into a movie. Just look at how disappointing the previous attempts had been. When it's trying to be faithful following the structure of the book, it came out dull and boring (the 1974 version and the 2000 TV movie version belong to this category). And when it succeeded to be somewhat entertaining, it had to transform itself into a gangster film and basically alter almost everything that's in the book (the 1949 version).
I saw The Great Gatsby because I was anticipating Tobey Maguire's big come back to the big screen (beside the fact that I love the book) but ended up giving all the credit to Baz Luhrmann. You must know, I can't stand any Luhrmann's work before. So when the light was dimmed and the Warner Bros logo appeared on screen I fully realized I was in for something different. This time, though, it is different in a very good way. It is one of those rare movies that have the charm and grandness that you have never found in any other movies and which it is not likely you will ever find again. Kinda like Gatsby himself.
Well done, Baz.