Over the course of my years as a reader and movie-goer, I have come to be less and less critical of movies that are adaptations of popular books. I forgive movie adaptations of books like "Harry Potter" and "The Hunger Games" for leaving out elements of the original books because, when you really think about it, books like that aren't really meant to offer their target audiences a whole lot in terms of real substance.. We read these books for fun, not because we want to truly get something out of them. Adapting a book like "The Great Gatsby", however, is a whole other matter. The book is an important part of the history of American literature, so any attempt at an adaptation is going to have steep expectations. On the surface, the new adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" walks and talks like F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic but the problem is that it stops there and doesn't really get into the heart of what the book is about.It seems unnecessary to go over the plot of "The Great Gatsby" since it continues to be very popular to this day, but for the uninitiated few, here's the rundown. At the height of the Roaring Twenties, Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) moves next door to the mysterious Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a "new money" millionaire who puts on lavish parties every weekend in hopes that Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), an old flame and Nick's cousin who lives directly across the bay from Gatsby, will take notice and rekindle their relationship. Through Nick, Gatsby and Daisy reunite, while Daisy's "old money" husband Tom (Joel Edgerton) becomes suspicious of Gatsby and investigates him and his inexplicable wealth.
The first thing to know about this new adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" is that its directed by Baz Luhrmann ("Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge!"), whose style I am personally not a fan of. His style-over-substance approach may work in other movies, but not in the movies he does, and at times "The Great Gatsby" is no exception. The whole movie is over the top, but it's not nearly as egregious as in "Moulin Rouge!" or "Romeo + Juliet". The party scenes (all two of them) fit Luhrmann's style, though Gatsby's introduction is so overblown that it's borderline comical. The rest of the movie feels subdued in comparison, but it remains vibrant, colorful, and loud, an accurate representation of the Roaring Twenties. I'd say this is Luhrmann's best use of his style if it wasn't for one thing: that distracting modern soundtrack. When the movie is constantly trying to represent the look and feel of the 1920's, hearing a modern day track really takes you out of the movie. I almost lost it when Gatsby and Nick Carraway pass by a car blasting rap music. I was surprised at the level of restraint Luhrmann had when it came to the style of the movie, but the soundtrack and unevenness sometimes took me out of it.
Luhrmann's adaptation is surprisingly faithful to the original source material, and it's clear that everyone involved had great respect for the book, but it is mostly faithful in dialogue and settings only. The only major change/addition is that the movie is that Nick Carraway is writing the story from a sanitarium, where he is diagnosed as "morbidly alcoholic" and depressed. It works fine, but I couldn't help but think that Luhrmann made him exactly like the narrator of "Moulin Rouge!". In fact, a lot of this movie reminded me of "Moulin Rouge!", if it was a little more restrained in its style, but I'm getting off topic.
The main problem with the other film adaptations of "The Great Gatsby" was that they didn't accurately portray the themes of the book, and that trend unfortunately continues here. The purpose of the book was to show how empty the lifestyles made the main characters, and I simply didn't get that from this movie. The worst offender is in Daisy, an arguable candidate for the central character of the novel. Carey Mulligan does a good job portraying her, but the back story that provides the whole basis of why she acts the way she does only gives a bare bones version in the movie. The other characters fare about the same, great performances and (mostly) accurate representations, but the elements that ultimately define them are mostly glossed over.
Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, in fact I wouldn't go so far as to call it a truly bad movie at all. However, it only reaffirmed my belief that film simply can't fully do justice to the book's intricacies and themes. I'd say it's still worth seeing if you've never read the book before, if only to serve as an introduction to the plot and characters. Just please promise that you will read the book in order to get the full experience of what it has to offer.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Stars
