Romeo and Juliet, Australia, Moulin Rouge: Baz Luhrmann loves a challenge. But has he bitten off more than he can chew with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?
It was always going to be a tall order, and arguably a task that should never have been undertaken. The story begins with Nick Carraway, who finds himself in Perkins Sanitorium reliving his first encounter with Gatsby. A few minutes of archive footage and rather a lot of voiceover later, it’s all champagne and hip-hop music as we’re swept amongst the masses in Gatsby’s back garden (well, back field, complete with fountains and swimming pools, obviously). These opening scenes are just a bit too hectic, almost as though production had about ten packets of Haribo too many and chucked in fireworks and dancing and every extra they had – to the point where it’s difficult to know where to look first.
Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple, and the beginning of this movie is a prime example of this. To add to this we have Tobey Maguire providing a voiceover which, if you’ve already read the book, is more than a bit annoying. If we wanted an audio book, we’d go out and buy one. The first part of the movie plays like a sugar-infused sparkle-fest, moves very fast and feels more like theatre than screen. Do not, however, be perturbed.
Based on the start, this film could have reduced a highly regarded piece of literature down to a riotous party, and an animated reconstruction of twenties New York. Mercilessly it doesn’t. By the time we meet Gatsby, everything takes a slightly calmer turn. DiCaprio proves himself a natural choice to play Jay Gatsby, the mysterious and filthy rich neighbour to Nick Carraway, and owner of what can best be described as Disneyland for alcoholics and flapper girls. As we begin familiarising ourselves with the walking complexity that is Gatsby, Carey Mulligan steps up to add yet more confusion to the mix. The problem is that Daisy Buchanan is Gatsby’s one and only. They met when he was a soldier and, despite falling head over heels, circumstances pulled them apart. Daisy married Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), her rude and arrogant husband also known as ‘the polo player’. Tom counts being unfaithful to Daisy as one of his hobbies, and this is the injustice at the heart of Fitzgerald’s story: here are two people who should be together, but they just can’t seem to get it right. It’s through their portrayal of this struggle that Mulligan and DiCaprio really prove their acting credentials, and Gatsby earns its place opening the Cannes Film Festival this month.
After a rocky start, this movie settles into a well-crafted, modern version of F Scott. Fitzgerald’s original story. There are a few gripes, such as the return of the voiceover and the dodgy use of floating text which makes it look slightly like a Waterstones’s advert, but there was a definite effort to stay true to the story and portray the dilemmas of the characters in a real and relatable way.
In preparation for his first meeting with Daisy after many years, Gatsby fills Nick’s living room with flowers and then asks ‘Do you think it’s too much?’ This really is representative of the whole movie. It’s bright, shiny, chaotic and overflowing with madness of the highest order. It’s not too much, old sport: yet again, Luhrmann’s got it just right.
