The Great Gatsby (A)

Baz Luhrman does the near-impossible task of taking a tragedy for the modern age and elevating it into a big-budget, continuously engrossing spectacle that retains all of its source material’s depth and craftsmanship.

Nick Carraway, the protagonist of both the film and the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic novel it is based on, is a young, working class man who gets a small cottage in 1920s Long Island and begins a friendship with the J. Gatsby, the young, mysterious, fantastically wealthy man who lives next door. Carroway soon learns that Gatsby is guarding some pretty critical secrets, and tied up in them is Daisy Buchanan, the woman he loves who is married to one of the state’s most powerful men.
Tobey MaGuire is a perfect fit as Carroway, bringing a sweet sincerity to the role. Carey Mulligan is always fantastic, and as Daisy she is no exception, playing her as both endearingly attractive and infuriatingly petulant--we (the audience) completely see why Gatsby loves her, but we also see why she is a selfish child. The focus of the story is Gatsby, and it is a role Leonardo DiCaprio was born to play. Taking the dreamy charm he displayed in Titanic and the intense ferocity he showcased in The Departed (with a dash of the charisma he employed in last-year’s Django Unchained), he makes a Gatsby that it is impossible not to find utterly riveting, as he is both larger than life and painfully human.

Though opening in spring has brought The Great Gatsby one of the biggest opening weekends of the year (making about as much as GI: Joe Retaliation made in four days and Oblivion did in a week), it is a pity that it didn’t open during awards season as this is one of those movies that would sweep the technical categories. It is quite possible that out of all living directors, Baz Luhrman (Romeo + Juliet, the Nicole Kidman Moulin Rouge film) is the one who knows best how to create breathtaking images. With his life-time collaborator (and wife) Catherine Martin at production design, the set pieces are flawless: I think it surpasses anything I saw in all of last year. Cinematographer Simon Duggan--probably best known for creating that sleek, modern, and vaguely foreboding look of I, Robot that dozens of note-worthy directors have spent years trying to emulate--reaches new heights on this picture; it is impossible to look away from anything on the screen. And, of course, the costumes (also from Martin) are amazing.

What is particularly great about it, though, is that at no point does it feel like this imagery is merely there; it is always used to further the story. This is a movie that would only work if everything is surreally gorgeous, but Luhrman knows to make it all have an empty, soulless quality. That is an enormous risk to take, but it is one that pays off fantastically. With the 3-D (the format this picture should be viewed in) and intricately detailed visual effects (seriously, the CGI is on par with anything you will see in this summer’s super-hero adventures) it is an utterly enchanting, absorbing world; however, the constantly moving camera (done with a giant crane that gave Luhrman a concussion), the lightning-fast cuts (worthy of an Best Editing nomination), and pounding score (which is somehow modern without being glaringly anachronistic) makes none of it satisfying. It looks like you are watching a hallucination, or perhaps looking into a perpetually rotating china doll house. It is all perfect, it is all realistic, but it isn’t real. And Luhrman absolutely intended it to be that way.

Because in the end, this is a story about a good person who is completely captivated by an impossible dream based entirely around an illusion, surrounded by priceless treasures but utterly miserable, living a life with no true meaning.
Luhrman’s fantastic vision brings this unconventional story to life not as a stuffy indie film but in the massive spectacle that Fitzgerald intended--and Gatsby deserved.