USA
3*
Director:
Baz Luhrmann
Screenwriters:
Baz Luhrmann
Craig Pearce
Director of Photography:
Simon Duggan
Running time: 143 minutes
After the disappointing Australia, Baz Luhrmann marks his return to the world of supersized, kaleidoscopic entertainment with The Great Gatsby. His film is the adaptation of the eponymous 1926 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is as short and compact as this film is long and sprawling, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours.
Set on Long Island in 1922, a stone’s throw from New York City, in the posh villages of West Egg and East Egg, the protagonist and narrator of the story, the 29-year-old Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), moves into a small cottage on the grounds immediately bordering a palatial fortress where there are nightly parties that draw elegant crowds from across the state and beyond partaking in the near-orgiastic celebrations of money and booze.
The host, we learn, is a mysterious man called Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is Nick’s age, and rumours swirl as to the origin of his fortune. When Nick finally meets Gatsby, he is most impressed by his smile, about which Nick waxes lyrical when he describes it as “one of those rare smiles you may come across four or five times in your life.” Alas, despite the faithful (unlike most of the story’s characters, who effortlessly two-time their partners) adaptation of nearly every single line in the novel, this very important character trait does not make its way onto the big screen.
However, Gatsby’s first appearance onscreen certainly presents him as a star worthy of Nick’s ultimate devotion, as we, seemingly from Nick’s point of view, look almost directly at him while fireworks fill the night sky in slow motion behind him. This point-of-view shot obviously seeks to make us identify with Nick, and consequently with his interest in Gatsby, but such appreciation is undercut by the pointless bookend structure of the film that is meant to mirror the writer’s voice in the novel.
The film opens with Nick, at a sanatorium in winter time, a few years after the events; he is struggling to come to terms with his friendship with Gatsby and is urged by his psychiatrist to write out his memories. These notes, typed out just like in Moulin Rouge!, become, as we realise by the end of the film with a sense of dread, the novel itself. It is a jarring structuring device that makes it seem like Fitzgerald could be equated with Nick, although it does illuminate the reason why there are a few scenes in both the novel and the film, related to us by Nick, where he nonetheless wasn’t present.
The Great Gatsby is mostly a story of love and admiration, between the dainty, ditsy Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a distant relative of Nick’s, and Gatsby. Despite his riches, Gatsby is a man who still yearns for the heart of the woman he has loved for many years and because of whom he has become the man he is at present. Nick is a man trying to make ends meet after the Great War and enjoying the life of a bachelor at a time of roaring debauchery. This wasn’t quite the case in the novel, but fortunately, Luhrmann is better at subtlety here than usual.
The set and costume design, as should be expected from a Luhrmann production, is gorgeous (“full of money”, to borrow Fitzgerald’s description of Daisy’s voice), and when late at night during one party the girls splash around the pool at Gatsby’s place with some inflatable zebras, one has a feeling of awe at how many things are going on at once inside the frame. The director was in the mood for indulgence, however, and the party scenes sometimes feel like a bit of a sideshow to the central drama.
The film generally isn’t very visually inventive, with scenes of fast cars shot the same way every time to provoke an impression of confusion, and whereas the director’s digital tracking shots whipped the viewer from Montmartre to an operatic moon in a single movement in Moulin Rouge!, here they seem both irrelevant and less sophisticated as we rush from one side of the bay to the other without a sense of exhilaration. The special effects are sometimes stunningly bad, as it seems the technical team forgot that backgrounds or rear projection don’t always have to be blurred to such an extent it becomes a distracting wasteland of colourful ash. The film has little feeling for place or people, and too many of the scenes feel like they were shot on a sound stage.
The Great Gatsby’s final 10 minutes are a mess and show Luhrmann’s intention was not to reflect on loss but rather to skim over it completely. The final chapter of Fitzgerald’s novel was riveting because it showed how tenuous Gatsby’s connection to the rest of humanity was, while the film nearly glosses over this significant matter entirely.
There are a few references to Sunset Blvd., another film about a longing for the glamour of yesteryear (Nick asks Gatsby “Are you ready for your close-up?” and one character’s death in a swimming pool immediately brings to mind the bookends of Wyler’s film), but Luhrmann is mostly his energetic self, and we realise that while his fingerprints are all over the film, his creativity has more or less run dry. A long sequence of dissolves towards the end of the film is almost sad, and so is the lingering close-up on Nick’s face when he gives Gatsby a heartfelt compliment a few moments later.
Despite the raunchy parties, we all go home at the end feeling little for Luhrmann the host, and while there are a few rare moments of joy to be had, among them the introduction of the many partygoers — transforming the novel’s list into a memorable smorgasbord of characters — the overall impression is one of excess rather than excitement.