Movie review: Great Gatsby

Most of you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925) is my favorite novel. I have alluded to it in previous Posts; so I am not going to explain all the reasons why I like it here. If you haven't read the novel, the story is set in NYC and Long Island in 1922. Jay Gatsby, now a 30 year old millionaire lives on West Egg (Little Neck) Long Island in a huge mansion. The woman he is in love with, Daisy Buchanan lives over on East Egg (Great Neck) Long Island. Eight years ago when he fell in love with Daisy, Gatsby was a poor Major in the Army about to be sent overseas in WW I. Major Jay Gatsby came back from the “great Teutonic migration” just as poor as before. We are led to believe that Daisy did wait for him some but soon moved on. She married a super-rich prig and elitist snob Tom Buchanan. They have one young daughter. Gatsby’s desire to get his “golden girl” back soon leads him to fast money, i.e. the mafia.  We never know what he actually does for them but when the novel opens he’s made a lot of money doing whatever they ask of him. Will Daisy leave her cheating, racist, hulking brute husband for Jay or not? 

The themes of the story are love, romance, money, lots of money and the freewheeling jazz age of the 1920’s. 

There have been several movie adaptations over the years with the 1974 Robert Redford-Mia Farrell version considered the best of the bunch. That movie followed the book very faithfully but the critics thought  it was too long and kind of boring. As much as I loved Redford and Farrell, I had to agree the critics were right about it being somewhat tedious. Now, (39 years later) there is a new version out in theaters. The artsy director Baz Luhrmann has served up a whopper of a Gatsby movie that cost in the neighborhood of 100 million to make. So far the critics don't know what to make of it and frankly I don't either. I was asked by one of my friends recently if I liked the movie and I honestly couldn't answer yes or no.  Here’s why:

The 2013 version is brasher, louder, irreverent, and vulgar. It’s also compelling. It’s Gatsby on steroids, the kind of movie the surrealist painter Salvador Dali might have done. Imagine a movie where David Lynch (Twin Peaks) does the script, Tim Burton (Nightmare before Christmas)) does the sets and lighting, Marilyn Manson does the costumes and makeup, Liberace does the party scenes and choreography, and rappers do the movie music. This movie is a handful.  Does it follow the novel's storyline? Sort of, yet it totally  leaves out significant moments like when Gatsby’s father came to his funeral at the end of the story and in so doing fills in details about his boy Jimmie.  The only calm, sane, sensible character in the book is the narrator Nick Carraway, but in Luhrmann’s version he becomes an incurable alcoholic and mental patient. Nothing could be farther than the truth, but remember Luhrmann s going for art not authenticity. Tom tells George in the movie that Gatsby killed Myrtle (George’s wife) yet in the book he only suggests it. Nick has an on again, off again relationship with Jordan Baker (in the novel) but in this Luhrmann movie they have virtually no relationship. Tom and Daisy’s daughter has a crucial scene with Daisy and Gatsby in the book but is non-existent in the movie. I could go on but you get my point, it is the same basic story but changed so much that it resembles the book about like how a dream would resemble reality.

The parties in the book are the typical 1920’s rich person’s orgy of pranks, booze, dancing and gossip. But Luhrmann’s Gatsby parties are Mardi Gras on speed, with blasting hip hop music, and some weird gargoyle floor show right out of a 1930's Berlin Cabaret. Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce which is impressive even by today’s standards is beyond belief in the new movie. This Rolls is lowered, supercharged with eight barrels sticking out of the sides of the engine compartment and apparently (with the help of CG I) capable of doing a hundred MPH. This was 1922 where 40 mph was considered a hell raising speed. Nick’s bungalow house next to Gatsby’s looks like it’s set in a primordial forest. I expected to see a lion pop up out of the dense foliage. It’s supposed to be the Long Island shore for Pete’s sake not the Congo.

Leo Di Caprio put on weight to play the early middle aged Gatsby and looked the part. That is until he wore clothes which were very ill fitted that made him seem like a hayseed stuck in Au couture.  I wouldn't wear what he wore even if I had millions of dollars. I thought this very odd since the whole point of Daisy considering going back to Gatsby was his money, cool sophistication and the fact that Tom next to Gatsby looked even more foolish and uncouth.  Not in this movie. Tom looks like he belongs in the expensive suits not Gatsby.

MY last criticism (wait, the positive comments are yet to come) is that the interpretation of Tom Buchanan is all wrong. Luhrmann’s Tom is a shouter, bellowing out opinions and orders as if everyone in the room were deaf. Tom doesn't shout. He’s old money; his money gets him what he wants not intimidation or noise. Tom would slip the head waiter 20 dollars and get the good table. He speaks quietly because his money speaks loud enough. Luhrmann’s Tom is still the slime ball the book portrays him to be but in a weird way I ended up siding with him when he puts down Gatsby as a two bit swindler.

Meyer Wolfsheim is a character in the book that is based on the real life NYC gambler Arnold Rothstein. Rothstein (Wolfsheim) actually did fix the 1919 World Series and a couple of years later he was gunned down at a poker game. He was low key, smart and Jewish. In this movie he is loud, flamboyant, a show off, womanizer, boozer and either Indian or Pakistani. He looked like a caricature of an 8^th avenue pimp. 

As you can see Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is way different but that is where the rubber meets the road. Luhrmann had no intention of giving us Fitzgerald’s Gatsby; he is giving us HIS Gatsby.  Luhrmann always does his thing. Luhrmann is about visuals and sound. He wants you to see, hear and feel the story. His Gatsby is visceral, tangible, tactile, and defying.  When you are done with this Gatsby movie you will feel like you just finished gorging yourself at a sensory smorgasbord. We are supposed to feel sadness (I believe) for Gatsby when he gets it in the back but in this movie I didn't even care. That’s because by the end of the movie, I felt like I'd been to one of Luhrmann’s versions of a Gatsby party and I needed a week’s rest. 

In the book Nick is so offended by the excesses of the rich that he leaves New York and goes back to Chicago with a desire to never again have “privileged glimpses” into the lives of rich people. In Luhrmann’s movie Nick goes insane and is being treated at a clinic. I see why. It wasn't just the sordid behavior of the main characters it was the whole orgiastic experience of everybody and everything. Nick must have felt like he was going down in Gatsby’s pool for the third time knowing that he had been in over his head right from the beginning.

If you want the airy, meaningless conversation of the super-rich, a Gatsby that is romantic but flawed, a Daisy that conquers the Gatsby’s of the world but doesn’t really want them and a Nick that is so moral that riotous excursions into the lives of the careless leave him sick to his stomach, then this version is not for you. If you dare to see what an artist can do with antiquity then this version is for you. I say live a little, go see it. Ironically that is what the 1920’s jazz age was all about, daring to do new things. Fitzgerald would (I think) want you to.