The Bottom Line
A hugely elaborate, well cast adaptation of an American classic that will provoke every possible reaction.
Opens
May 10 (U.S.), May 15-17 (Europe) Cannes Film Festival (opening night) (Warner Bros.)
Cast
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey
Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki,
Jack Thompson, Amitabh Bachchan
Director
Baz Luhrmann
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan star in Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
The center holds amidst all the razzle-dazzle and razzmatazz of Baz Luhrmann's endlessly extravagant screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's imperishable The Great Gatsby.
As is inevitable with the Australian showman, who's never met a
scene he didn't think could be improved by more music, costumes, extras
and camera tricks, this enormous production begins by being
over-the-top and moves on from there. But, given the immoderate
lifestyle of the title character, this approach is not exactly
inappropriate, even if it is at sharp odds with the refined nature of
the author's prose. Although the dramatic challenges posed by the
character of narrator Nick Carraway remain problematic, the cast is
first-rate, the ambiance and story provide a measure of intoxication
and, most importantly, the core thematic concerns pertaining to the
American dream, self-reinvention and love lost, regained and lost again
are tenaciously addressed.
Set to open the Cannes Film Festival on May 15, five days after
its U.S. theatrical bow, the Warner Bros. release stands to receive the
full range of critical responses and is backed by an unstinting
promotional push to spark big openings, which are far from assured. Its
ultimate box office fate, though, will be determined by whether or not
the film catches on with younger audiences; it'll be a matter of the
zeitgeist.
At the very least, Luhrmann must be given credit for delivering a
real interpretation of the famous 1925 novel, something not seriously
attempted by the previous two big screen adaptations (there was a
now-lost 1926 silent version). Paramount's long-elusive 1949 release,
directed by Elliott Nugent, suffered from threadbare production values and uneven performances but Alan Ladd was a terrific Gatsby. The same studio's second attempt, in 1974, felt suffocating and stillborn; it had the wrong director in Jack Clayton and Robert Redford was opaque in the title role. A 2000 television adaptation did not make a significant impression.
For many, the thought of Luhrmann tarting up such a revered classic with 3D, anachronistic Jay Z and Beyonce
music, techno-spiced party scenes and Australian locations was
sacrilegious, if not criminal. Perhaps even fans of what the director
did with William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! might
have wondered if he was the right guy to take on the work most often
proposed as The Great American Novel.
But no matter how frenzied and elaborate and sometimes distracting
his technique may be, Luhrmann's personal connection and commitment to
the material remains palpable, which makes for a film that, most of the
time, feels vibrantly alive while remaining quite faithful to the
spirit, if not the letter or the tone, of its source.
It begins gently, in patchy black-and-white that, accompanied by
somber music, turns into a depth-enhancing color 3D frame that provides
an equivalent for Luhrmann's previous red curtains and at length gives
way to the famous green light at the end of Daisy's pier. Curiously, we
are introduced to Nick (Tobey Maguire) as a patient in a sanitarium, where he begins to tell a doctor (Jack Thompson) the story of what happened during the summer of 1922.
Luhrmann's cultural collisions and dislocations then commence as a
synthesis of archival footage and CGI (some of which looks to feature
the Empire State Building and other yet-to-be-built skyscrapers a decade
before their time, and one shot featuring an unlikely copy of James Joyce's
Ulysses, which had only just been published in Paris) inflected on the
track by modern music, all to the purpose of evoking the Jazz Age that
Fitzgerald did so much to name and popularize. A polite lad of modest
means trying to find a toehold on Wall Street, Nick was at Yale with
rich bruiser Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and has taken a little house in West Egg, Long Island, right across the bay from Tom and his wife, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and in the shadow of the ostentatious mansion owned by the elusive Jay Gatsby.
Everybody from party girls to politicians comes to Gatsby's
extravagant parties, where the booze flows and the music plays and the
carousing goes on all night. But no one ever sees the host, whose wealth
is surpassed only by his mysteriousness. No one knows where he or his
money came from but, during the nocturnal bacchanals, no one much cares.
Luhrmann and his ever-essential design collaborator (and co-producer and wife) Catherine Martin
always seem extra-stimulated by such scenes, which involve hundreds of
ornate costumes, constant movement and music which here imposes blends
as unlikely as hip hop and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Whether you can
abide some of the specific musical choices or not, the way Luhrmann and
his music editors mix and match wildly disparate source material is
ballsy and impressive; the operating principle is mood and emotion, with
a surprise element that can be jarring and/or inspired.
In time-honored dramatic fashion, Gatsby's entrance is delayed for a
half-hour and, when the moment comes, there's something in the way it's
shot combined with the self-possessed I-own-the-world smile on
DiCaprio's face that reminds of the first time you see the young Charles
Foster Kane in an earlier film about a fellow with more money than he
knows what to do with. This moment and, even more so, in the superb
compositions and cutting of Gatsby's death, show how classically precise
Luhrmann can be when he wants to be. Throughout, he photographs
DiCaprio the way a movie star used to be shot -- glamorously and
admiringly, taking full advantage of the charismatic attributes with
which only the anointed few are blessed.
Brandishing his favorite phrase, “Old sport,” as well as a slightly
affected accent no doubt carefully cultivated to disguise his origins,
Gatsby befriends the innocent Nick, whom he asks to arrange a rendezvous
with Daisy, his sweetheart from five years earlier when he was a
soldier off to Europe and the battlefront. Having already been taken
into New York by Tom and his mistress Myrtle (Isla Fisher)
for a debauched afternoon, Nick now accompanies Gatsby for lunch at a
mixed-race speakeasy with notorious gambling associate Meyer Wolfshiem
(curiously impersonated by Indian cinema star Amitabh Bachchan).
Once Gatsby and Daisy reunite, nearly an hour in, the film settles
down a bit to focus on Gatsby's sincere effort to recapture the girl who
got away, who, when he went to war, married rich boy Tom. Gatsby wants
to believe they can rewind the clock to the moment when they fell in
love, to the purity of what they once had. “If I could just get back to
the start,” he says, choosing to ignore Nick's warning that, “You can't
repeat the past.”
They do try, organizing a nervous lunch to break the news to Tom,
then heading into Manhattan on a sweltering afternoon where, in room at
the Plaza, everyone's truths come tumbling out, followed by tragedy on
the road back and, ultimately, in Gatsby's pool. The precipitating
automobile accident is perhaps too sketchily portrayed for full impact
and the final stretch is slowed by too much commentary by Nick, who has
become a bit of a bore by now.
Narrator/observer characters like Nick, or Stingo in Sophie's Choice,
are almost always uncomfortable fits onscreen, especially when they're
far more bland and naive than everyone else around them but still prone
to making assessments and judgments about people actually living life
rather than standing to the side of it. This is exacerbated here by an
element of hero worship towards Gatsby that distorts the more wistful,
ambivalent attitude conveyed in the book's final pages. Maguire's
slightly aging boyishness has become tiresome by the film's second half
and a reduction of Nick's concluding commentary would have helped.
By contrast, we don't see enough of Daisy's best friend, the sporty,
haughty Jordan Baker, who epitomizes the sort of modern 20th-century
woman who has just arrived, newly hatched, in the world and will take
from it what she pleases. Australian newcomer Elizabeth Debicki, who, with her towering slim build, black hair and pool-like blue eyes resembles an elongated Zooey Deschanel, is terrific as far as the part goes, but after a few prominent scenes up front, the character recedes.
After a number of roles which, however well acted, may not have been
comfortably in his wheelhouse, DiCaprio looks and feels just right as
Gatsby; the glamor and allure as at one with his film star persona, he's
sufficiently savvy to convince as a successful bootlegger but still
young enough to recapture the hopes and innocence of youth.
Daisy is a difficult character for any actress to embody to
everyone's satisfaction because she's a woman onto whom the reader tends
to project one's own ideal. Accordingly, viewers will debate whether or
not Carey Mulligan has the beauty, the bearing, the dream qualities
desired for the part, but she lucidly portrays the desperate tear Daisy
feels between her unquestionable love for Gatsby and fear of her
husband. Edgerton is excellent as the proud, entitled and seething bully
Tom.
Opulence defines the production values, led by Martin's sets and costumes. As for the use of 3D by Luhrmann and cinematographer Simon Duggan,
it is probably the most naturalistic aspect of the film; only rarely do
you notice it in a pronounced way and yet it really does add something
to the experience, drawing you in as if escorting you through a series
of opening gates, doors and emotional states.
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