Thoughts On The Great Gatsby (the Baz Luhrmann Production)

The Great Gatsby (film)

Baz Luhrmann

2013

Everyone in our media soaked world knows that Baz Luhrmann has produced and directed a new version of The Great Gatsby. At this point, most of the people who had any intention of seeing it already have, and though the pre-release reactions were very polarized, the negative reviews are in the majority. I thought I’d weigh in.

First, I’m a huge fan of Baz. Moulin Rouge was a tour de force. I’m not in love with his version of Romeo and Juliet, mostly because it’s missing some scenes, but overall I like it. More importantly, Shakespeare would like it. 

Does it date me to say that, 

while I’m not in love with the movie, 

I was in love with Claire Danes when it came out?

 

As film adaptations go, it was way better than some of the other versions.

 

Including this nonsense.

Truth is, I was optimistic for the Baz version of Gatsby. If you read my post about The Great Gatsby you’ll understand why. At its core, Gatsby is a very flashy, colorful novel. The scenes are bright and shiny and the characters are mostly one-dimensional and vapid (Nick described them as careless). I once heard the entire novel summarized as “Rich people are fucked up.” It’s really a good book for Baz to cover, because, like F. Scott, he packs so much meaning into a colorful package and so effectively produces content directly from glitz and glamor. Baz could’ve made his Gatsby better than the other film versions, and there are several other film versions. There’s even Man Of War, where Nick Cage is a high-end gun runner. He’s totally Gatsby. You heard it here first. And don’t forget about G.

  

Actually, forget about G. 

G was totally forgettable.

But and alas, The Baz Gatsby was not Baz’s best work. I’d go out on a limb and say it was no Australia, and that’s sayin’ something. 

Because Australia kinda sucked.

 

From here on out there’s spoilers, so stop reading if you’re concerned with that sort of thing.

In the novel, Nick Caraway wasn’t a writer, and certainly didn’t end up in an institution.

  

Nick is not Holden Caulfield, Baz!

Nick’s only function in the novel is to narrate. He doesn’t often initiate social interaction. He sort of dates two women, and gives both up really easily. He doesn’t do much, and most of the things he does do are for Gatsby, or because Gatsby asks him to. Nick isn’t a full character in his own right, he’s a mouthpiece to tell Gatsby’s story and show disgust and contempt with everyone else. Giving Nick a back-story and a future-story violates his purpose, makes the narrative more about him, and it isn’t supposed to be about him. Making him a depressed writer of all things, it’s way too easy.

Also, lest we forget, Baz has done it before:

 

You already did this, Baz! Nick Caraway is not the depressed, drunk, idealistic writer from Moulin Rouge.

Also, making Nick insane also makes him a (potentially) unreliable narrator, which is an entirely different issue. F. Scott does not approve.  

Other small but important changes were numerous. At the first party (in the novel) Nick feels out of place and just sort of stands in the corner embarrassed. In the movie, he decides to get rip roaring drunk. The change was so important to Baz that he gave it a voiceover instead of just showing Nick reaching for drinks. But standing alone at a party, embarrassed and pretending not to be, is very different from walking in to a party and poppin’ bottles. Nick would never do that. That’s not his deal.

Similarly, the scene where Nick and Gatsby met Meyer Wolfshiem is not a raucous party in a basement with dancers, gallons of booze, and hundreds of sodden celebrities partying like it was 1929. The 3 of them go to a fancy restaurant. Gatsby, when he arranges a lunch, prefers quiet restaurants, not wild parties. That’s a huge part of his character. He may throw wild parties, but he doesn’t attend them, he doesn’t have lunch at them, and he certainly wouldn’t pick that location to ask someone as boring as Nick for a favor. So that scene change, from an upscale restaurant to a bacchanalia, it just doesn’t make sense, except that Baz felt a need for extra spectacle, something the novel had plenty of already.

In the novel, Gatsby’s dad comes to his funeral, proving that Gatsby still acknowledges his family, that his dad knows he’s “made it” and is aware of his name change. It also allows Nick (and the audience) to confirm the true version of Gatsby’s life, since Gatsby’s told so many lies and half-truths about his background. We needed to see his father and have that scene at the funeral to really know that Gatsby was honest with Nick in the end. In the movie? Nope. None of that. We’re just not supposed to think too much about it. Owl Eyes was also missing from the funeral. Owl Eyes is considered by many to be a stand in for Jesus. Baz took Jesus out of the funeral. YOU DON’T TAKE JESUS OUT OF THE FUNERAL, BAZ!

These are all important details. There were also many small changes that just didn’t need to change. Wolfshiem wears cufflinks made out of human molars in the book. In the movie it’s a tie pin. There’s no logical reason to change that, and fans are going to notice. In the elevator leaving the theater, a girl next to my wife and me was talking to her husband about the cufflink switch. She was irritated about it. I was irritated about it. F. Scott is irritated about it. My wife and her husband spent the rest of an elevator ride baffled as she, I, and the ghost of F. Scott yelled things like “What the fuck, Baz?!” What this says to me is that Baz had the props people put together a molar tiepin, maybe just because he remembered it wrong, or maybe they got it wrong, or something simple like that. But at some point someone involved noticed that detail. Someone said, “Hey Baz, it’s supposed to be cufflinks” and Baz, instead of having props fix it, said, “FUCK YOU!!! THIS IS MY VISION AND WE’RE NOT CHANGING ANYTHING! I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT THE AUDIENCE THINKS!”

  

                         

On the plus side:

There were some very well done parts. The casting was super effective, from Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick all the way down to George Wilson. The sets were good. Maybe not mind blowingly spectacular, but what is?

 

Other than you, Leo.

The fireworks behind Gatsby in his first scene (see above) are eye-rollingly over the top, exactly how Gatsby would have it for that introduction. The scene where Gatsby and Daisy meet in Nick’s house is so superb it hurt to watch. And the fruit-juicing machine made a cameo, which, like the molars, isn’t a big deal really, but many of us would have held a grudge if it hadn’t been there somewhere.

If I’m being uncritical (which could happen, maybe. One day. I mean, it could happen.) it wasn’t all that bad a movie. It was better than many retellings. It was better than G. But, for a book that’s largely visual, with shallow characters and not really much dialogue, it’s sad that it’s been done wrong, again. It’s sad that Baz, of all the people in this wide world, didn’t do it better. It’s sad that Baz didn’t make that classic book into a classic movie, because he really could have.

I could go on. I could talk about drug use, about race issues, about a number of things, but if my wife was to be trusted about ½ an hour after the movie ended, I should probably give it rest. So, I’ll leave you with this final thought, because I love this final thought:

 

Just watch Lord Of War, and have a nice night.