I was in high school once - hard as that is to imagine - and while I was there, much reading was done. I take some of it with a grain of salt but still consider most of it worthwhile. And while there were some books like The Scarlet Letter that made me want to stop reading all together, there were others like The Great Gatsby that remind me why I didn't stop. It was the first instance in which I fell in love with the story before anything else. It's a story about love. And the beautiful, twisted, dark things we do to try and protect it. It's regarded today as the Great American Novel.
Which is why news of a movie didn't surprise me. Since F. Scott Fitzgerald published the book in 1925 there have been several adaptations of what was once described as a critique of the author's generation. One that lived in the Roaring Twenties where the money was plentiful and the booze flowed
This movie opens with Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) recounting the experiences of his summer spent in West Egg, a village just outside of New York City. Nick is a bond salesman looking to make his fortune via the economic prosperity of Wall Street. He's rented himself a small cottage on Long Island and on his first day travels across the bay to pay a visit to his cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) and her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), a mate from his days at Yale. But looking through the trees he catches sight of his neighbor's property. A huge fortress of an estate that belongs to Gatsby.
The rest of the original story centers around the mystique of Gatsby and the unraveling of his mystery. In the movie's opening act, they build up this mystery by word of mouth. You hear several of the attendees at one of his famous parties speak in passing of his triumphs as a war hero, his success as a business man, his romps as an adventurer. All of this until we are finally introduced to the titular character himself: one Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).
This story is one that means a great many things to a great many people - myself included. One for those who prefer their storytelling to have a slow burn. Two words that don't immediately come to mind when you think of Baz Luhrman, who directed this film. This is the director of Moulin Rouge: a loud, sweeping musical with a boisterous soundtrack and bright set pieces. Which is great when it comes time for the parties, but perhaps not for the quieter moments of the film, which, based upon the story probably should have been most of it.
Baz was an interesting choice to direct this. I didn't see the 3D version but I could tell in certain shots (especially in the Manhattan set pieces) that a lot was done to make things pop. Particularly the color palette, which was over-loaded to Kick-Ass comic book levels of saturation. This works in some scenes, but it others it all just seemed a bit too bright for Gatsby. Now assuming you've at least heard of this story then you know where it leads and you know how it ends. We'll get into that later. But first a word on the characters and their relationships.
Nick meets Gatsby by way of invitation. An invitation to one of his weekend-long summer parties. An invitation that no one else has ever received. And when we first see DiCaprio as Gatsby, "with a smile that could make you believe in yourself as much as he believed in you" the potential that this movie had became evident. Gatsby represents "new money". A changing of the guard in the flapper's era. It was important that we saw a gentleman that exudes class yet still youthful enough to relate to anyone around him. Despite him not being the best host, Old Sport. But Gatsby wants to meet Nick because Daisy just happens to be the love of his life and she just happens to live on the other side of the bay and happens to be related and really, this can only end well.
And then there's Tom: the weakest of the main cast in more ways than one. His character is a Yale man. Tall and strapping with shoulders as wide as his trophy case, but we don't get a clear sense of that strength or confidence other than an early scene where he's on a horse for a few seconds. So when we come to the point where both his wife and his mistress are slipping through his fingers there is little else he can do than bring a "Gatsby is a lying meanie-head" defense to the table. And in the penultimate confrontation in the Manhattan suite between the two men, Gatsby is the one ready to blow his stack, when it should probably be the other way around.
Sure, Tom in the book was a bit of a dick at the end of the day, but he was still intelligent and a gentleman. Here, he's too much of a meathead for any of his revelations about Gatsby's sudden wealth to be believable and when Jay tells Daisy to say she never loved her husband, you wrongly think "Yes! Tell him!" Tom is a dead-from-the-neck-up bully who abuses women and those less fortunate. What reason does she have to stay?
It all seemed very forced. Not unlike Nick Carraway himself. Here's a question: why was Nick so upset about Gatsby? OK, real quick. Spoiler alert: J. Gatsby dies. But you probably knew that, as I did. What I don't know is what drives Nick to commit himself to a ward and recount this tale. Sure, the Nick of the novel was upset with Gatsby's death but he moved back to the Midwest because of his disillusionment with the East Coast way of life. He was trying to clear his head, not cleanse his soul. Plus, he and Gatsby were more so associates than friends, so it's weird to think he would mourn him the way he did here. I think a Ryan Gosling would have been good in this role. Someone who can brood effectively without telegraphing too heavily.
But here's where I pull an Amazing Spider-Man on you again. I didn't hate this movie.
Maybe because it's not the worst thing out there. Probably because my expectations weren't lofty to begin with. It's an average movie elevated by above-average performances. Almost everyone in here was casted very well. Even if they weren't written that way. Even Tobey Maguire wasn't a bad pick in hindsight. I even thought that going further into Gatsby's past as James Gatz and his history with Daisy was a really good choice. My biggest regret is that this movie could have been so much more than it ended up being and now we'll probably never know, because I can't imagine anyone pulling off Gatsby the way Leo did here.
My theory is this: the day that someone decides to make a Gatsby period piece, is the day that we get a good adaptation. Consider briefly what makes Boardwalk Empire or Midnight in Paris as good as they are. One a TV show, another a movie; both able to capture the essence of whatever era they visit. The setting, the people, the food, the clothes, the music. You can put whatever song you want to on the soundtrack, but when you're composing the score you should be more mindful of what goes where. After the first couple of swing jazz/hip-hop mash-ups, it goes from cute and passable to forced and messy. Not to blame them for trying. It was a really good try. The execution could have been better.
Maybe I'm wrong about all of that, though. A look back into history shows us both the mixed reviews of the novel's original run and the sheer number of adaptations of it. This is a particularly tricky narrative to get a beat on and perhaps we never will. Either way, releasing this film in the summer was a mistake to begin with. Summer time movie goers want to see sweeping tales of heroism and cunning. Jay Gatsby is definitely cunning, but he's no hero.
Despite all of these things, however, I know one to be certain:
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| The Lizard still looks like shit. |
3 Stars out of 5
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