After much hype and social media-fuelled expectation, the king of campy spectacle Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's almost perfect jewel in the US literary canon is here.
Film: The Great Gatsby
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton
Shot in 3D (to no obvious benefit) and complete with long, over-the-top party sequences that re-imagine the Jazz Age through the lens of MTV and the Rich Kids of Instagram, thanks to music by Jay Z and friends, this version is so typically and infuriatingly full of Luhrmann's boundless enthusiasm for spectacle, sequins and glitter that all the nuances of the novel are quickly lost. Having typewritten text from the book appear on the screen while Tobey Maguire's excessively wide-eyed Nick Carraway remembers his fateful summer does not compensate for Luhrmann's tired preference for pastiche and making moving fashion magazine spreads at the expense of performance and story.
The Great Gatsby endures because of Fitzgerald's masterful ability to reflect the human costs of the Jazz Age on its flappers and boater-wearing young men caught between the end of World War 1 and the onset of the Great Depression, and that's too much to ask a circus ringmaster like Luhrmann to be true to.
The opening scenes of Carraway's move from the Midwest to Egg Island play like something out of a Disney film with everyone delivering their lines in a stilted, cut-out manner meant to ensure that their thoughts don't distract us from gaping at the beautiful pictures that Luhrmann has created. You're half expecting them all to suddenly break out into songs about how great it is to be rich in the 1920s but, thankfully, Luhrmann holds back.
Carey Mulligan as Daisy is dull and out of her depth, proving to be neither alluring nor engaging enough to warrant the obsessions of Gatsby. DiCaprio starts off uncomfortably, looking more like a model pulled from the pages of Vogue who's being asked not to move too much, but as the film progresses he does his best to make Gatsby more human. Maguire as narrator Carraway has a Thornton Wilder naivete that quickly becomes irritating and just makes you want to slap some sense into his puffy cheeks.
Drenched with computer-generated effects and glitzy art decoration, the film may make for a two-and-a-half hour song and dance spectacular at the movies, but then you have to forget about its source material.
Which leads you to ask why bother adapting the novel and not just make a Jazz Age-inspired all singing and dancing pastiche in the vein of Moulin Rouge?
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