The Great Gatsby

2013
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Writers: Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce

A film based on a novel about the wild excesses of the 1920s and its consequences both socially and economically, though numerous versions of The Great Gatsby have been made before, the timing of this one feels quite pertinent regarding the state of the world now. F. Scott Fitzgerald's iconic story has now been re-imagined by the frenetic and visually lush mind of Baz Luhrmann and it's harder to think of a more suitable director.

It's immensely beautiful to look at, filled with an incredibly rich décor of stunning art deco sets and costumes, and lots of very good-looking people. It takes the iconography of the 1920s and updates it, makes it feel new again. There have been questions about the use of the modern soundtrack but personally I think it works, conveying the sense of vibrancy and modernity revellers would have felt at Gatsby's lavish parties, something which couldn't have been translated to today's audiences through use of dated period music.

If Luhrmann was trying to express the atmosphere of this period of New York as being all surface and superficiality, then he undoubtedly succeeds. The party scenes, which surprisingly are quite infrequent, are filled with a heady aura of decadence as crowds of people perform for the swooping and glorifying cameras. But the rest of the film looks marvellous too, especially the depiction of New York itself, artificially digital-looking but still with the power to allure, filmed from the top of skyscrapers then BASE jumping down to the crowds below.

There is also the interesting contrast with the 'valley of ashes', the industrial wasteland between the glamour of the city and the decadence of West Egg. Its closeness belying the fragility of this aristocratic existence, the flip-side of the coin that provides the energy and the illicit means for Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) to create and maintain his lifestyle, as well as harbouring his and this whole society's downfall.

Yet much of this substance is lost beneath the surface. Despite the film continuously reminding us of how literary this story is through the use of prose literally written on the screen and the interesting addition of the story of Nick Carraway's (Tobey Maguire) writing process, the film remains visual at best. Gatsby's earliest scenes are brimming with stylistic excess- a simple sit-down lunch is filmed with endlessly sweeping and zooming cameras, accompanied by near constant cutting between shots to the point it becomes almost nauseating. Thankfully it calms down a lot after these scenes, but the building of the romantic plot is left to fill the gap, and prevalence for surface undermines this, rendering the more dramatic scenes later on slower and more distant.

Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent as the mysterious and layered Jay Gatsby but, as much as I love Carey Mulligan, her Daisy can't compete and thus their romance is left to feel cold. We are supposed to see Daisy the way Gatsby sees her with his undying all-consuming devotion, yet the film prefers to reserve its loving gaze for Gatsby himself, turning him into an omnipotent figure but leaving everything else feeling imperfect. By the end many of the characters are left to stand around in the background as Gatsby dominates- the developing relationship between Nick and Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki) is barely given time to play. 

The heavy-handed use of motifs, especially the green light of the bay and the self-referencial all-seeing eyes, whilst important in expressing the themes of yearning and consequence, end up being forced down your throat like too many shots of champagne. By the end you can understand Nick's disgust with the lifestyle, but the film is so much in love with the look and feel of it all that this message is undermined. The characters we are meant to engage with are kept at a distance, and all we are left with are the surfaces to admire.