The Great Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann is one of those directors whose l’art pour l’art stylistic modus operandi always splits opinion; when he took on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, one of the great American novels, the result was bound to draw some and repel others. It was never going to be as loyal to the book as the 1974 adaptation was (directed by Jack Clayton and written by Francis Ford Coppola), so the sumptuously lavish outcome should perhaps come as little surprise.

The story deviates only slightly away from that which is set down in the book; the background is altered however with the narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) noting his experiences down initially to a psychologist, as a man suffering from the alcoholic and emotional excesses of a summer spent in Twenties New York City. He recounts the events after his 1922 move to West Egg, and specifically, his dealings with the enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the latter’s tragic romance with Carraway’s seraphim cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). DiCaprio’s performance is, as always, enticing. He furnishes the titular character with an emotional rawness that seems to course just beneath the courteous façade and yet, crucially, retains that quintessential Gatsby civility. Nonetheless he is outshone by Joel Edgerton who plays Daisy’s staunchly conservative husband Tom Buchanan in such a gloriously distasteful way, fully realising the malicious hypocrisy at the heart of the character.

One of the central tenets of the book – the emotional emptiness that entails wealth – is finely executed in the film, though without the subtlety that Fitzgerald conveyed. Cinematic ostentatiousness is the biggest issue with The Great Gatsby: the visual emblems that symbolise each character’s essence (Gatsby and that green dock light of jealousy) are ruthlessly exploited by Luhrmann, wrenched from the delicate background that Fitzgerald put them in and brusquely thrust into the foreground. By doing this the film sheds the allure of implication that gave the book such longevity – the latter is entirely based on the memories and experiences of Carraway, thus the reader is present at none of the private moments between Gatsby and Daisy. That Luhrmann fills these voids with his own imagination is controversial, but perhaps indicative of the difference between the written word and cinema.

Another aspect of the film that has drawn sharp intakes of breaths is the soundtrack. Produced by Jay-Z and featuring pop princesses like Beyonce and Lana Del Rey, indie acts The xx and even Bryan Ferry it initially felt like an over-indulgent exercise in orgiastic celebrity excess. But no: the music is far less intrusive than at first feared, and successfully lends the contemporary veneer of relevance that Luhrmann must have been aiming for when he commissioned the work. It adds an extra layer of unfamiliarity and foreignness to Gatsby’s hedonistic parties yet allows a modern audience to immediately tap into the prevailing spirit of decadence. That is perhaps a metaphor for the picture as a whole: despite The Great Gatsby’s visual opulence it stands accused of holding the audiences hand, not trusting in their intelligence to keep abreast of the complex themes. It’s a shame but then this is Baz Luhrmann, the same guy who made those other scintillatingly bloated spectacles Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge (2001) – so what were we expecting?