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.
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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?
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As
film adaptations go, it was way better than some of the other versions.
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Including
this nonsense.
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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.
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Actually,
forget about G.
G was totally forgettable.
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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.
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| 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.
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Nick is not Holden Caulfield, Baz!
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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:
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You
already did this, Baz! Nick Caraway is not the depressed, drunk, idealistic
writer from Moulin Rouge.
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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?
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Other
than you, Leo.
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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:
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Just watch Lord Of War, and have a nice night.