Review: The Great Gatsby

#91 - The Great Gatsby


The Great Gatsby is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel. Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man who throws rich, lavish parties every weekend, befriends his next door neighbor, Nick Carraway. While getting to know Gatsby, Nick finds out that Gatsby has his sights set on rekindling the romance he once had with Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is Nick's cousin, so Gatsby takes advantage of this and asks Nick to set up a meeting with Daisy. Seeing Gatsby ignites a love inside Daisy that she thought had left her long ago. Gatsby and Daisy begin to have an affair, keeping it all a secret from her husband, Tom. However, Tom seems not to notice Daisy's absence because he is also having an affair with a city girl named Myrtle Wilson. Gatsby begins to have a larger presence in Daisy and Tom's life, and Tom then begins to notice. He digs into Gatsby's past and finds out that he is not the man he claims to be. Just as Daisy is about to tell Tom she is leaving him, Tom pushes Gatsby's buttons and gets him extremely upset. This frightens Daisy, and it makes her reevaluate her relationship with Jay. As Gatsby and Daisy are driving home, Myrtle runs out in the middle of the road, thinking it's Tom driving the car, and she is hit and killed. Gatsby takes the blame for Myrtle's death to protect Daisy...because she was driving. Gatsby is convinced that Daisy is going to leave her husband, Tom, and become his forever. The film ends with Gatsby waiting for Daisy's call. The phone rings, and George Wilson, Myrtle's husband, shows up at Gatsby's house and shoots him dead. Jay Gatsby dies thinking that the phone ringing is Daisy calling to tell him she has left Tom. It's a very heart-warming feeling, until the camera cuts to Nick Carraway on the other end of the call.

In the film, Nick Carraway is not only the narrator, but he is also writing the book The Great Gatsby throughout the film. He has been admitted to a sanitarium due to "morbid alcoholism" and is encouraged to put his feelings down on paper. The feelings he pens ends up being the entirety of the novel, The Great Gatsby. I like that the director chose to do this. It was interesting to see the words on the pages show up in the scenes sporadically. It was quite cool. Especially at the end when Gatsby reaches out toward the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, and the ghost of the final words of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel fade onto the screen.

Baz Luhrmann's take on The Great Gatsby is nothing short of odd. It's colorful on the surface, yet very dark underneath. There are portions of the novel that were twisted for the film, or even scenes completely added to dig deeper into a character. For example, Gatsby's death scene was extended. In the novel, you hear gun shots, but the death is never described. In the film, we see George Wilson show up at Gatsby's house and as Gatsby is emerging from the pool to answer the phone call that he believes is Daisy, he gets shot in the chest. Then, George puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. To me, I like this addition because it makes you feel even worse about the fact that the call isn't from Daisy, but from Nick. If the phone hadn't rang, Gatsby may have stayed in the pool long enough for his butler to see George and interfere in the situation to possibly stop it from happening. Gatsby's life is/was tragic, and this death scene brings it full circle.

Some aspects of Luhrmann's creativeness were so elaborate that accurateness and continuity were overlooked. For example, there is no way that a white man, in the 1920s, would be chauffeuring around a car full of jazzy black folks. There is also no way that there would be a foreign gentleman allowed to run any portion of New York City, nor fix the 1919 World Series. The man who fixed the 1919 World Series was named Arnold Rothstein, and he was a Jewish-American man. As for continuity, there is one scene in particular that drove me insane. When Daisy and Gatsby hit and kill Myrtle, you can clearly see a man in the driver's seat EVERY TIME the camera cuts back to the car; however, when Myrtle is flying over the car, Daisy is definitely in the driver's seat. See the pictures below...

See. Definitely a problem. Unless you're trying to suggest that Gatsby WAS in fact driving the car, but he tried to cover it up by putting the blame on Daisy...but that's insane because Gatsby did EVERYTHING to win Daisy back, why mess with that by giving her up at the first sign of trouble?...plus, if you wanted to achieve that, why have an up-close shot of Daisy actually in the driver's seat? It's just an issue on the director's part. Pay attention to who you have driving the car during what is, arguably, the most important scene in both the novel and film.

There are several things I loved in the film, though. The costumes and make-up are phenomenal. If the costume designer doesn't win an Oscar for the work done on this film, then the Academy is dumb. The colors, fabrics, and styles are spot on for the '20s, and all of the dresses and suits really bring the scenes to life. The party scenes wouldn't be as extravagant and wonderful without those beautiful costumes.

I also love the casting. I don't think there's a single person in the film that stood out to me as being lacking compared to another cast member. They all fit the roles, and they all brought the same amount of vibrancy to the screen. Of course, I loved Leo; however, his accent was killing me. I'm still not really sure if he goes in and out of the accent because he wasn't focusing on it OR if it was bad on purpose. Take, for instance, the scene when Daisy and Nick are at Gatsby's house, and Gatsby gets a phone call. He yells into the phone, and all traces of an accent are completely gone - like the accent is a front, just like his fancy house, fancy clothes, and fancy parties. I still don't know how I feel about it though...this wouldn't be the first time Leo bombed on an accent...can someone say Blood Diamond? Yikes.

FYI: Leonardo says "old sport" 34 times throughout the film. Ughhh.

The last thing I would like to say, and this is more of an issue with F. Scott Fitzgerald than with Baz Luhrmann, is that I am not really sure why Daisy is so quick to drop Gatsby at the end. She seems to love him, and says she has loved him for five years, but as soon as Tom comforts her after Myrtle's death, she gives in and leaves New York with her husband and daughter. She doesn't even attend the funeral! To me, this shows that Daisy never really loved Jay. She was just bored with her rich life, and needed to get attention from someone since she wasn't getting it from her cheating husband. Gatsby entered her life at the right moment, and she took advantage of it. That's sad. That makes me love the character of Gatsby even more, I guess. If I could talk to F. Scott Fitzgerald, that would be my question to him: Did Daisy ever really love Gatsby? I'm not so sure the more I watch this film. I think she viewed Gatsby as a good distraction - she maybe even tried convincing herself she loved him, but maybe never truly did.

Overall, I give Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby 3.5 out of 5 stars.