Whenever a movie includes a superlative in its title, it
always sets up the inevitable puns for reviewers (both casual and formal) to
shout, and after a while it gets rather tedious.
But when it comes to the subject of Baz
Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby, to you, sir, I say, “Not so great, old sport.”
A relatively close adaptation of Fitzgerald’s novel,
The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway
(Tobey Maguire) as he recounts his life as a bond salesman in the New York of
the Roaring Twenties.
After procuring an
invitation to the most lavish party in town – which just happens to be right
next door – Nick meets the owner of the house, the ever-optimistic Jay Gatsby
(Leonardo DiCaprio).
As Nick and Gatsby
become friends, Gatsby makes an unusual request – he wants to meet with Nick’s
married cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan).
The great American novel, a story of enduring love, required
reading for high schoolers the world over – all accurate descriptors for
The Great Gatsby.
And it’s not that Luhrmann’s adaptation is
absolute rubbish.
It’s just far from
great, much less than such a work of literature deserves.
Luhrmann’s
Gatsby is not without its virtues, but its weak points outshine the
good ones such that I suspect that even Luhrmann devotees might be
disappointed.
First, the good news.
DiCaprio and Mulligan are exemplary as Gatsby and Daisy, first-rate approximations
of the characters they embody.
It’s
difficult to imagine an actor whose own star power better personifies that of
Jay Gatsby, the never-say-die millionaire whose optimism is matched only by his
opulence.
(Sidebar:
when is DiCaprio getting that Oscar?
He consistently turns in solid work, and
while I don’t think he’ll land one here I do think he’s long overdue.)
And Mulligan is solid as the emotionally
vapid Daisy, languid in all the right places but without rendering Gatsby’s
affection inexplicable.
We too might
love Daisy if we’d known her that long ago.
Finally, there’s Maguire, who does exactly what the novel asked of Nick –
he observes, he mediates, he explicates.
And therein lies the problem.
The film is too faithful an adaptation in
this regard, situating Nick as the main character through whom the entire movie
is filtered.
But that technique doesn’t
work for a film, because we don’t need a character to explain what we’re meant
to see; we can just see it.
Worse, there
are moments where Nick narrates what he sees while the camera focuses only on
him; in a cinematic medium, this is the equivalent of someone telling you about
their summer vacation.
Because Luhrmann
is known for such a highly stylized approach to visuals, it’s quite a surprise
that he does this so frequently; we
know he knows better, but why won’t
he let us see what’s going on?
(This is
all to say nothing of the odd framing device placed over the film that seems to
conflate Nick with Fitzgerald, to varying degrees of confusion.)
As for the visuals, Luhrmann does a decent job with the big
parties, lavish set pieces that show off the decadence of the Jazz Age.
It’s classic Luhrmann, velvet vomit to excess
and glittery garland as far as the eye can see (and it looks grand in 3D, to
boot).
I had initial apprehensions about
the use of contemporary music, but I didn’t mind it in the feature film itself;
the effect seems to be simulate the shocking avant-garde nature of the music
that must have been played at Gatsby’s parties, and it seems comparable to
Deadwood’s use of modern profanity in
lieu of historically accurate vulgarities.
But all told, I came away more than just a bit disappointed,
surprised at how restrained the movie was in some points (especially for a
director like Luhrmann), pleasantly satisfied with the performances, but more-than-mildly
irritated with the decision to foreground such a passive observer like
Nick.
Build me a movie not around his
tepid narration but around the dynamic between Gatsby and Daisy, and I’ll be
ready to call that Gatsby “great.”
The Great Gatsby
is rated PG-13 for “for some violent images, sexual content, smoking, partying
and brief language.”
So you know someone
gets hit by a car, and someone else gets shot, and Daisy and Jay are seen in
bed canoodling, while Tom has a mistress.
Then there’s all that party stuff that... well, I wouldn’t go so far as
to say it’s not appropriate.
But it is
weird that they rate movies for “partying.”
Moulin Rouge (2001)
– I’m really not the target audience for this. I’m quite certain of that.
Having said that, my reaction to Moulin
Rouge is really quite lukewarm. In Moulin
Rouge Baz Luhrmann invents the velvet-vomit aesthetic with a rock opera
take on fin-de-siècle Paris starring Ewan McGregor as an aspiring playwright
and Nicole Kidman as the cabaret courtesan who loves him. The film might have
made a bigger impact had I seen it earlier; thirteen years after its release,
it feels like a lot of what I’ve already seen, especially in the wake of
Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (about
which I felt similarly ambivalent). Both films opened with their protagonist/narrator
on a typewriter, the words zooming across the screen. As for the central
conceit, the gimmicky pastiche of pop tunes and prewar visuals, it’s clever
initially, and the use of Elton John’s “Your Song” is actually quite perfect
for a romantic film. After a while, though, it gets tedious and at one point –
the moment at which Jim Broadbent, otherwise engaging in the movie, is forced to
sing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” – quite demoralizing. Throw in John Leguizamo’s brutal
caricature of Toulouse-Lautrec and a runtime that feels much longer than its
two hours, and Moulin Rouge will have
you seeing red. Unless of course you’re into this sort of thing. If you surrender
to the chemistry Kidman and McGregor clearly have between themselves and
overlook the fact that the film tries to compensate for its lack of substance
with an overabundance of style, you’ll have yourself a blast. As for me, I’ll
be over here with the more convincing flicks.
