"The Great Gatsby"

The Great Gatsby (2013):



An American classic, this time rendered by excess-master Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Australia). I started out hating it and then loved it as it went along. I thought the hip-hop and other anachronisms in the story would make it ridiculous, but I found that the music only intensified the idea of hard partying aristocrats in love with the world-changing music of the “underclass,” much as jazz was in the 1920s, when the film was set. In true all-American style, Gatsby is about the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and their none-too-charitable attitudes toward the other. So much for “reserving judgment being a matter of infinite hope.”

Thanks to Leo DiCaprio, an actor whose work I respect, this was the first version (multiple readings of the Fitzgerald novel and many viewings of the hazy Robert Redford-Mia Farrow film classic) in which I truly got a better glimpse into Gatsby’s character, his essentially innocent and romantic longing for something entirely impossible to attain. This was the first Gatsby where I actually felt sorry for him, instead of smirking at his deludedness and willingness to commit all manner of high and low crimes along the way. Now it is narrator Nick Carraway (played by Tobey Maguire) who earns my derision, for being party to a series of wanton misbehaviors and doing nothing about it. But he gets his just desserts in the end. This film makes Nick the scribe of an actual novel, and it also introduces him as a post-Gatsby inhabitant of a sanitarium, supposedly driven a bit mad by what he has witnessed, a too-dramatic and altogether unnecessary bit of story tampering. Also, the story is missing the element of his incipient romance with Jordan, who in this film seems more forbidding than alluring.

While DiCaprio made me feel Gatsby, I thought the casting of Daisy (Carey Mulligan) was a dismal mistake. Mulligan displayed none of the fey charm, luminosity, fragility, or carelessness that Mia Farrow displayed in the ‘74 version.

This flick has made me a bit obsessed with all things Gatsby and I have since watched a version from 1934 and read a 2000 Salon article article positing the idea of Gatsby as actually a mulatto passing for white. This idea puts a completely different spin on the idea of societal acceptance and the compelling, corrupting lure of the American Dream. I also discovered that an updated, all black version was filmed in 2011-12 titled “G.” I don't know anyone who saw it, though it was screened at festivals and had a strong cast. Makes ya think, though. (Here's the trailer for the G flick for comparison.)

Kudos to Luhrmann for taking this on. We can all find something to relate to in Gatsby. For aren't we all somehow straining to reach that green light at the end of a pier?

Memories:

The RedBox DVD Catchup Marathon!

Tried to catch up with a few things that I missed last year by renting a bunch of disks.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012):

Modern day pair of Philly misfits find love. Bradley Cooper does a great job playing a guy with justifiable anger issues, not to mention bipolar episodes, whose healing is oddly choreographed –literally – by his family and a widowed neighbor girl with issues of her own. Jennifer Lawrence, who won an Oscar, is good as someone with a “mouth on her” and little filtering, and she totally obliterates our image of her as Katniss Everdeen, the crusading heroine of last year’s The Hunger Games. But Playlist has some plot holes, and in places it is loud and messy as it attempts some sort of latter day mix of Moonstruck and every movie about a gone-off-the-rails guy trying to mainstream back into normalcy. As if we didn’t already know, love is the tonic that cures all ills. Oh—and Robert DeNiro and Chris Tucker are in it. Both are hefty.

The Hobbit (2012):

Though this story comes first in the Tolkien oeuvre, we got the fantastic Peter Jackson-directed trilogy Lord Of The Rings into theaters first, so there are bound to be comparisons. This first of Jackson’s three Hobbitries is pretty dismal, only because it hits all the wrong notes and lingers on the wrong things. It’s still got the awesome Kiwi scenery, eye-popping special effects, and overwrought costumes and makeup, but the story is overstuffed with hard-to-follow CGI battles and odd creatures. As a viewer I didn’t feel as invested in the story, this one about a group of dwarves on a suicide mission to reclaim their ancestral mountain kingdom from a dragon named Smaug.

This story feels rushed and forced, particularly the beginning. Unless you are a Tolkien scholar, you have to glean the setup from tedious voiceovers and awkward exposition monologues. It’s tough to know the dwarves that well or feel any real sympathy for them. They should have brought the raucous Gimli into it, because we identified with that red haired, ass kicking, comic rogue from the LoTR, except in this chronology he doesn’t yet exist. Our first introduction to the dwarves is the overlong scene where they bumrush Bilbo’s show, and they just come off as obnoxious, gluttonous, ugly little frat boys rather than an endearing, noble band of fierce nomads. We already know the hobbits, the elves, and the men and their backstories and concerns, but we need more to feel something for the weird little stumpy dwarf men and their desire to regain a dark, dank cave of a place filled with gold and jewels. It’s not warm and fuzzy. We know very little about Bilbo as well, so his reasons for joining up in this quest are also a bit suspect. Additionally, there are so many characters and side stories that it is tough to keep everything together: A white orc with a severed arm, the dwarf king’s heir and his pompous glowering, a sickness coming over the wood caused by a necromancer who can raise the dead in an abandoned fortress, the matter of some legendary elvish swords now in dwarf hands, the infamous Ring of Power being purloined from Gollum/Smeagoll by Bilbo, Saruman’s duplicity, and what have the Elves got to do with it all anyway?

This film is for those diehards who already know every phrase and clause of the book. I kept wishing for the film to end, and when it does, we are left hanging as this is nowhere near the end of this interminable tale.

The Avengers (2012):

Comic book trash for those who love comic book trash. This flick from Marvel ties together previously established origin stories for heroes the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and others (Black Widow, Nick Fury, Hawkeye), but I have only seen the first two Iron Man movies (Iron Man III is in theaters now) and part of Captain America. The Avengers’ script (standard issue villain takes over the world via a MacGuffin that must be found) has some snappy, smart moments –mostly thanks to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Ironman character, and the villain of Loki, Thor’s brother who casts discord wherever he goes, is straight from Norse mythology. But when space aliens attempt to take over New York in an epic battle with the Avengers, I had reached information/explosion/special effects overload. It was All Too Much. One of my girlfriends adores this movie and says she could watch it over and over. I barely made it to the end of my first and guaranteed only viewing. Great cast – Downey, Scarlett Johanssen, Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Gwyneth Paltrow, among others – but not my kind of movie.

Also this week:

Looper (2012):

Caught this one on cable recently. I’d been wanting to see it and found it alternately fascinating and impenetrable. Good premise, bad execution, too much going on to be linear.

Fave Joseph Gordon-Leavitt plays Joe, a member of an elite crew of live-for-today 2044 hooligans called Loopers. This assassin ring kills crime world targets from 2074, delivered back over the years via an outlawed time machine. He is given an appointed time and place of delivery, and as soon as the victim appears, bagged and tagged with his pay in silver bars attached via straitjacket, he executes them and disposes of the body. Oddly they use a giant weapon of old, the messy hand cannon of the 1700s known as a blunderbuss. Unfortunately being a “looper” comes with the “proviso” that they only get 30 years to serve until they too get looped back for execution. In the meantime it’s all rock’n’roll, fast cars, a jump in the number of people with telekinesis, and some sort of eye-drop-delivered drug amid a dystopian city backdrop of beggars, burnouts, and thugs. Hell breaks loose when Joe is faced with closing his own loop, aka executing his 30-years-gone self, played by Bruce Willis. Old Joe is a fighter, and after a brawl Young Joe lets the quarry escape.

See, in 2074 Willis is nabbed in China and watches as the ganglanders kill his wife; he overtakes his captors then leaps into the time machine back to 2044 determined to nip in the bud the scary overlord known as Rainmaker who is mowing down all the loopers at one time and making life hell in the future. In other words, Willis wants to kill the monster as a child, and save the life of his bride. He’s gleaned some identifying info to track the tyke, but has to keep his younger self and the rest of the executioner squad off his back. At the same time, he has to safeguard Young Joe or there won’t be any Old Joe. The future can change in an instant. The trail leads to Emily Blunt, wielding a convincing Okie accent and a mean axe stroke, who is raising up a boy on an isolated farm. As it happens, this youngster has gargantuan telekinetic powers that can spark fires, twirl the furnishings, churn up hurricanes and uh, kill people if he gets riled. At 6 he’s formidable, so we can only imagine the horrors he will be capable of 30 years down the line as the Rainmaker. Just as Young Joe tracked down Blunt, Old Joe arrives soon after, and Young Joe finds himself conflicted: Should he protect an innocent boy and his mother figure, who loves the kid unconditionally and just may keep him from being a monster, or let his older self Willis squash the kid like a bug in order to protect one possible salvaged future in China? As Willis shoots at the kindergartner, Young Joe, an orphan who has yet to experience the redemptive love of a Chinese wife, ultimately puts the blunderbuss into his own mouth, saving the kid and wiping out Willis’ existence.

OK, maybe I like the flick a little better in retrospect. Still-- Piper Perabo shows her tits for no reason, Jeffrey Daniel grows facial hair and tries to be hardcore as a mob boss (please Jeff), and the intense Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) and his crooked nose are wasted. The watching was at times uncomfortable. I didn’t get excited until this chilling kid showed up with his impressive tot acting and the scripted ability to turn the world upside down with his singular abilities.