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:
No comments:
Post a Comment