THE GREAT GATSBY directed by Baz Luhrmann, screenplay by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulli gan, Tobey Maguire and Joel Edgerton. A Warner Bros. release. 142 minutes. Opens Friday (May 10). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NN
Baz Luhrmann should never have been allowed within a hundred yards of The Great Gatsby.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterful novel isn’t a Roaring Twenties love story about a rich man who yearns for the rich woman he loved and lost years earlier. It’s an elegy for that era seen through the eyes of cynical alcoholic Nick Carraway as he recounts his brief acquaintance with an enigmatic golden boy named Jay Gatsby – the one decent man he’s known.
That’s a difficult concept to put across, and it’d probably make for a very quiet movie. When filmmakers take on The Great Gatsby (this is the fourth big-screen adaptation), they think of the phony world its hero builds around himself and picture elaborate parties, luxurious art deco furnishings, movie stars in gorgeous period wardrobe. It’s all seen to be empty spectacle in the book, but on screen the onslaught of glamour inevitably overwhelms the intimate human drama.
As much as he wants to engage with Fitzgerald’s essential message – sic transit gloria mundi – Luhrmann can’t help piling on the spectacle. The first 90 minutes of his Gatsby are awash in sparkles, spangles, crystal and Jay-Z remixes – all straining to sweep Tobey Maguire’s endlessly wide-eyed Carraway into the era’s manic momentum.
After the third elaborate production number, I came to suspect that Luhrmann only made Gatsby as a movie because he couldn’t mount a stage version. There are a handful of quiet, intimate moments that might have worked beautifully live – Gatsby’s nervous brunch with Daisy, or Tom Buchanan calling Gatsby out at the Plaza Hotel – but on screen they’re constantly overwhelmed by the next 3D car chase or dance extravaganza.
Too often, the actors seem overwhelmed as well. DiCaprio looks the part of Gatsby, even if he’s just reprising his performance as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, but he struggles to sell the character’s practised affectation.
Worse, Luhrmann makes the mistake of casting the recessive, watchful Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, who’s supposed to be so lively and engaging that men are bewitched by her. About 10 minutes in, I started wondering what Emily Blunt might have done in the role and the whole thing became much more interesting.
And let’s not get started on the movie’s treatment of black people as walking cultural signifiers. Luhrmann had the same problem in his previous picture, Australia, but at least there he was working with iconography he understood.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision
