Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of Fitzgerald's seminal 'The Great Gatsby' made me cry. It was an extraordinarily niche type of weeping, and those tears were shed for an unashamedly pretentious set of reasons (#FirstWorldProblems). I was lamenting the state of Hollywood cinema, whose percentage of original concept films -not based on a book or a 'true story'- has reached a pitiful low in recent decades. I mourned the utter decimation of a narrative which has enchanted me since the age of fourteen. Also my eyes were stinging from all the swooping, long-angled shots and piercingly bright colours.
I concede, I'm the wrong person to be reviewing this film. I'm the chick who devours the novel on a semi-regular basis, quotes Fitzgerald at any given opportunity, and always endeavours to party with the same reckless abandon as one of Jay Gatsby's degenerate guests. I also refuse to watch New Girl because I can't stand how colourful it is. But I really wanted to like this film, and assumed I would love it. I'm an enormous fan of incongruity, disjuncture and juxtaposition in film, and with Baz Luhrmann at the helm, I believed he would successfully combine contemporary culture -both musically and visually- with the chaos of the Jazz Age and create an unforgettable, intense, gritty and moving piece of cinema.
Instead, to quote Bret Easton Ellis, the whole film seemed like “some kind of ghastly Illuminati prank”. Within the first minute I was disappointed and enraged, because -despite seeing the film in good ol' two dimensions- it had clearly been filmed with a 3D audience in mind. Visual tricks were used at entirely unnecessary points, and where there was potential for great theatricality at Gatsby's infamous parties, the set just felt cluttered and overwhelmingly contrived.
I concede, I'm the wrong person to be reviewing this film. I'm the chick who devours the novel on a semi-regular basis, quotes Fitzgerald at any given opportunity, and always endeavours to party with the same reckless abandon as one of Jay Gatsby's degenerate guests. I also refuse to watch New Girl because I can't stand how colourful it is. But I really wanted to like this film, and assumed I would love it. I'm an enormous fan of incongruity, disjuncture and juxtaposition in film, and with Baz Luhrmann at the helm, I believed he would successfully combine contemporary culture -both musically and visually- with the chaos of the Jazz Age and create an unforgettable, intense, gritty and moving piece of cinema.
Instead, to quote Bret Easton Ellis, the whole film seemed like “some kind of ghastly Illuminati prank”. Within the first minute I was disappointed and enraged, because -despite seeing the film in good ol' two dimensions- it had clearly been filmed with a 3D audience in mind. Visual tricks were used at entirely unnecessary points, and where there was potential for great theatricality at Gatsby's infamous parties, the set just felt cluttered and overwhelmingly contrived.
Luhrmann also treated his audience like morons, even spelling out sentences from the novel in type on screen, confessing to what we had all immediately realised: nobody can present the story as well as Fitzgerald himself. My qualms did not lie with a lack of faithfulness to the novel, and I was very happy to see an entirely unique take on the classic. However, where Bazza fell short was in wholeheartedly undermining any subtlety the film would have held as a stand-alone, conceptually original piece. Too often Nick Carraway (played by Tobey Maguire) would comment on action immediately after it had taken place, driving the romance and magic of the novel home with all the daintiness of an earthquake.

The central performances of Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan showed flashes of promise in an otherwise 'meh' embodiment of their characters. Mulligan captures Daisy's paradoxical vulnerability and arrogance well, and DiCaprio certainly looks the part, but fails to enthral sufficiently to be deemed “worth the whole damn bunch put together”. The best acting came from the minor characters in the novel: Myrtle Wilson played by Isla Fisher (despite her questionable New York accent. A serious 'WTF?!' moment when she first speaks), and Tom Buchanan played by Joel Edgerton, who brought tension and intrigue to an otherwise painfully accessible unfolding of the plot.
As an alternative to watching the film and sitting through too many depressingly overstated visual and narrative effects, and those long-angled shots which make you feel like you're playing a video game -specifically The Sims 3- , just listen to the soundtrack and watch the trailers. The most visually impressive and tense moments in the film are all contained in its previews, and the soundtrack is flawless. All credit to Jay-Z, because that shit truly is cray.
Certainly not a green light from yours truly to The Not-So-Great Gatsby.
Nikki Sage
As an alternative to watching the film and sitting through too many depressingly overstated visual and narrative effects, and those long-angled shots which make you feel like you're playing a video game -specifically The Sims 3- , just listen to the soundtrack and watch the trailers. The most visually impressive and tense moments in the film are all contained in its previews, and the soundtrack is flawless. All credit to Jay-Z, because that shit truly is cray.
Certainly not a green light from yours truly to The Not-So-Great Gatsby.
Nikki Sage