Movie Review: The Great Gatsby

With Luhrmann’s Gatsby, you get what you pay for.... Almost.

Genre: Drama. Rated: M

What’s It All About? F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920's New York-set classic novel about the mysterious aristocrat Jay Gatsby and those that come into his orbit gets an epic makeover.

The Verdict: It’s not perfect but it is an impressive, engaging adaptation and less excessive than you might think.

3.5/5.0 from me, David.

Firstly a bit of perspective. Some critics have lashed out at Baz Luhrmann labelling his adaptation of The Great Gatsby overblown. Each to their own but let’s face it, complaining about a Baz Luhrmann film being over the top is akin to objecting to New Orleans during Mardi Gras season. Both are going to be extravagant, gaudy, raucous, big and bombastic. You get what you pay for.



Party like it's 1920-something



And Luhrmann’s Gatsby with thanks in no small part to his partner in life and artistry Catherine Martin is all of those things - to a point, around the mid way point that is. But after most of the frenetic party scenes have passed, the film becomes much more sedate than you’d expect a Luhrmann film to be - a point glossed over by some critics – as the pace slows considerably to concentrate on the drama.

"Complaining about a Baz Luhrmann film being over the top is akin to objecting to New Orleans during Mardi Gras season. Both are going to be extravagant, gaudy, raucous, big and bombastic. You get what you pay for." 

 

Luhrmann could never be characterised as a restrained director but in this case, he has reigned himself in, in part. In fact if you were expecting an entirely in-your-face Luhrmann experience you might ask for half the ticket price back.



All  that glitters....



I confess I’m not exactly a fan of Luhrmann’s films – I found Moulin Rouge and Australia too excessive (I’m the pot calling the kettle black here I know) and the latter laughably cringe-worthy. Conversely, Luhrmann’s hugely creative approach to bring Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet alive for a new generation was I thought, inspired.

And that approach is undoubtedly his aim in this adaptation of the American literary classic - to shake the story up in a big way, backed by a characteristically modern soundtrack. And this Gatsby if nothing else is far more involving that the most recent adaptation of the novel – 1974’s fairly dull sudser starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Luhrmann’s version featuring a charismatic performance from Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, not surprisingly makes its predecessor look positively dead on arrival.



Kiss me you fool



I didn’t have a problem with Luhrmann’s over-the-top approach to Jay Gatsby’s opulence because in this case it’s fitting for the story (after all, isn’t that what opulence is?). The parties, the excess, the hedonism and the larger-than-life depiction of all are a kind of thinly veiled allegory for Jay Gatsby himself. He’s a man who isn’t what he seems, his opulence simply a facade masking grand delusions of a truly happy, contented life.

The theme of longings manufactured, experienced and ultimately dashed is one that runs through the story; our narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire, Spiderman) gets a taste of high society but he’ll never belong to it. His cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan, Never Let Me Go) finds that love proves a tragically pragmatic notion and all the money and hopefulness in the world can never buy Gatsby what he so desires, to have Daisy by his side.



King of the world!



Purists of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel will no doubt object to Luhrmann’s creative licence – the 3D friendly camera swoops, the Jay Z-centric soundtrack for example – but again, they’re points that seem moot in light of Luhrmann’s track record.

While some of the cast’s performances are laid on with a larger-than-life brush, others are nonetheless impressively nuanced; standouts for me were Mulligan, Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty) as Daisy’s brutish, womanising husband Tom and Elizabeth Debicki (A Few Best Men) reminiscent of a young Cate Blanchett as their sporting socialite friend Jordan Baker.

Yes, at almost two and a half hours this Gatsby is much too long but an epic running time is also a Luhrmann trait. Like I said, you get what you pay for.

Movie News: The Great Gatsby

Success is sweet revenge for Baz



Baz mimes his desire to put the critics' cajones in a vice 

If success is the best revenge then Baz Luhrmann’s is proving particularly sweet.

Despite some scathing reviews, his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has well exceeded expectations raking it in at the international box office; it’s already made $130 million of its $180 million budget back since its release, first in the US on May 10 and has given the likes of Star Trek: Into Darkness and Iron Man 3 some stiff competition.

Who’d have thought a lavish 3D adaptation of an American literary classic could do that hey Baz?

"We’ve got a bona fide literary blockbuster on our hands," Luhrmann told news.com.au today with good reason to crow after the cutting critiques.

"When does that happen?

“It ain't over till it's over, but the numbers are way above expectations."

"It was an extraordinarily big gamble.”

News.com.au reports that Gatsby is Lurhmann’s most successful film released in the US to date having taken $90 million already – Moulin Rouge is his second, it made $57 million stateside.

"I could not be happier......No one saw it coming. Everyone said we were dead. Everyone said we would flop."

In Cannes where Gatsby opened the world's premier film festival in the coveted opening slot last week, Luhrmann took a pragmatic approach to the vicious criticism his films attract.

"The critical fallout is pretty much identical for all my films," he told The Guardian. "It's not just mild disappointment. It's like I've committed a violent, heinous crime against a personal family member."



Lurhmann with his Gatsby cast on the Croisette in Cannes

 And he revealed to The Sydney Morning Herald that the barbs and arrows do hurt when you’re taking a massive gamble like Gatsby.

"I worried for the life of the film," Lurhmann said. "It's like having a child go off to school and the kids are beating them up.

"I feel very responsible for leading everyone from our lead actors to every person in the crew and our financiers down a road and, when the reviews are negative, I worry for those who believed in the project.

"I don't want to see them derided or feel like they've backed the wrong horse."

"Did I worry about the reviews? Yes. Because I thought the child might be beaten to death before it got a chance even to get into the schoolyard."

As he prepares to walk the red carpet tomorrow night alongside stars Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire - Leonardo DiCaprio has pulled out, reportedly to party in Cannes - at Hoyts Entertainment Quarter in Sydney, just a stone’s through from Fox Studios where the film was shot, Lurhmann is clearly basking in proving the critics wrong.

"I could not be happier," he told the SMH. "No one saw it coming. Everyone said we were dead. Everyone said we would flop."

The Great Gatsby opens on May 30. Take a squiz at the trailer below featuring music from Beyonce and Florence Welch.

Film News: The Great Gatsby Baz Luhrmann

Great Scott! Baz Luhrmann divides the

critics….. Again.

“You can’t repeat the past,” warned Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. Ah, yes you can Nick.

If there’s one guarantee when it comes to the films of Baz Luhrmann – from Romeo and Juliet to Moulin Rouge and Australia - it’s that they’ll be big, bombastic and spectacular and the critics’ knives will be out to slice and dice the result. There aren’t many directors quite so polarizing as our Baz.

And so history repeats itself with Luhrmann’s glitzy 3D adaptation of Gatsby opening this week stateside (and the coveted opener next week at Cannes Film Festival) and some cutting reviews – some wallowing in the vitriolic – preceding it. At issue once again is the director’s flamboyant, over the top approach (said to have cost $180 million) to the notoriously difficult to adapt story of the American dream in decline, love unquenched and dripping excess.

 “When it comes to Baz Luhrmann and his style, it’s hard not to have such a strong opinion…… He seems to freely embrace the fact that he’s a polarising director. Clearly he’s decided that this is his niche.”

Kenneth Turan of the LA Times writes that the film is Luhrmann’s “excuse to display his frantic, frenetic personal style. A filmmaker who has increasingly made a fetish of excess and a religion of artificiality, Luhrmann and his team pile on the spectacle and the glitter until we are gasping for air.”



On the set of The Great Gatsby



Salon.com brands this Gatsby “debauchery in Disneyland”, its critic Andrew O’Hehir suggesting it could “go down in history as a legendary flop.” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers gives the film just one star lamenting a “crushing disappointment” that would have F. Scott Fitzgerald turning in his grave.

Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly labeled Luhrmann “the caffeinated conductor” lamenting a perceived preference for style over substance;

“He'd rather blast your retinas into sugar-shock submission.”

Meanwhile The New York Observer’s Rex Reed was baying for blood;

“You don’t realize just how much misguided damage can be done to a great novel until it is vaporized by a pretentious hack like boneheaded Australian director Baz Luhrmann,” he said.

And The New Yorker’s David Denby who describes Luhrmann’s Gatsby as “a flimsy phantasmagoria” wasn’t much kinder;

 “Luhrmann’s vulgarity is designed to win over the young audience, and it suggests that he’s less a filmmaker than a music-video director with endless resources and a stunning absence of taste,” he wrote.



Does style trump substance?



Speaking about the Luhrmann polarizing effect, The Week’s entertainment editor Scott Meslow told The Daily Beast;

 “When it comes to Baz Luhrmann and his style, it’s hard not to have such a strong opinion…… He seems to freely embrace the fact that he’s a polarising director. Clearly he’s decided that this is his niche.”

Back in 2008, when Luhrmann’s Australia was facing the wrath of the critics he was circumspect telling Reuters;

“When you do what I do, you expect to be covered in mud.”

But Luhrmann wasn’t about to take the barbs lying down either firing back at his critics.

"They hate me, and they think I'm the black hole of cinema,” he said. “They say, 'He shouldn't have made it, and he should die."'