Needs more glitter!
After a five year break from features following the disappointing Australia, director Baz Luhrmann is back on the big screen with an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It’s glitter-bedecked, respectful of the source material, and in my opinion, just magnificent.
Gatsby tells the story of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a war veteran and Yale graduate from the midwest. Nick wants to write, but he’s come to New York to make some money in the stock market. He rents a cottage on Long Island next to a mysterious man named Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) who throws lavish parties the whole city seems to attend. Across the water lives Nick’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her boorish husband Tom (Joel Edgerton). Before too long we realise that Daisy and Gatsby were once in love, Tom has a secret mistress from the wrong side of the tracks, and Nick is in way over his head.
Now I think I should say upfront that this film is divisive. While I loved it unreservedly, many of my friend (including my movie podcast co-host Katie) and a good chunk of critics did not. Most reactions were along the lines of ‘it wasn’t terrible’, although Luke Buckmaster from Crikey ripped poor Baz a new one. Podcasters The Spoiler Guys (aka ABC/Sydney Morning Herald film critics Alice Tynan, Giles Hardie and Marc Fennell) were more on my side, and I think the difference between those who loved it and those who didn’t comes down to how you feel about the book.
Mel’s house
This is one of the rare novel adaptations that gets it right. The novel The Great Gatsby is economical with words and heavy with feeling, and Luhrmann brings it to life thoughtfully and beautifully. Fitzgerald, writing in 1925, didn’t know that the stock market was about to crash, or that the world was going to spiral headlong into another war, or how much longer prohibition would last. Luhrmann does, of course, and imbues the film with plenty of historical context, situating these doomed characters in in a doomed world.
The inevitable bust following the boom also situates this film perfectly in our own times. Most viewers will easily remember a time five or six years ago when credit was easy and the jewels were enormous. As long as you were on the right side, of course. The good times rolled for the well-off and no-one noticed the people at the bottom who owned the service stations and shovelled the coal.
It’s also good to remember that this is a Baz Luhrmann film. If you want realism and subtlety, you’ve come to the wrong place. For me, the exaggerated performances are perfect for a group of people throwing themselves towards their own frenzied destruction, and the unsubtle CGI and 3D add to the story telling by putting the audience in the room and reminding them of the flimsiness of the world they have built for themselves. The cast do a wonderful job, DiCaprio and Edgerton in particular. The characters appear to be living on the edge and the actors push the boundaries of realistic performance to keep them there. This overdone level of artifice is just perfect for this film, which is all about overdone artifice.
DiCaprio is brilliant because he is completely unafraid of looking silly
So with those caveats in mind, I say go and see this film, if for no other reason than it’s great to see a big-budget mainstream film that is made for grown-ups who might not be interested in the latest superhero blockbuster. And if you are an Australian taxpayer, you are an investor, because the government subsidised this film to the tune of some $80 million dollars, so I guess that means you want it to do well. By giving it more of your money, obviously.
Four and a half stars.
Have you seen it? What did you think.
