The Great Gatsby (2013)
Certified: 14
Duration: 143 mins
Directed by: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke, Amitabh Bachchan, Max Cullen, Adelaide Clemens, Brendan Maclean, Jack Thompson
KRS release
The Great Gatsby dazzles the screen with its depiction of the Roaring Twenties. In 1922, Tobey Maguire is Nick Carraway, who once believed himself to be a writer. He has just come to live on Long Island on what is known as West Egg, which is opposite to East Egg where his cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) lives. She is married to Tom (Joel Edgerton), who is filthy rich. Nick and Tom have been to the same college.
It is this sense of everything is possible, how timelines converge musically, how the silver screen is made to look magical
Nick also meets Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), who is a renowned golfer. He has started work as a bond salesman and will be going to Manhattan regularly. Soon he will also meet his neighbour, the famous Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is a millionaire and a socialite of the first degree as he hosts endless parties.
Meyer Wolfsheim (Amitabh Bachchan), who is Gatsby’s business partner, gets close to Nick.
Gatsby is shrouded in mystery and Nick discovers that he and Daisy were once an item. Daisy is pleased to see Gatsby, and she also knows that her husband used to have lovers.
Nick meets Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), wife of a gas station owner and one of Tom’s former lovers, while Gatsby reaches out more and more to a very confused Daisy… and the party goes on and on!
Baz Luhrmann directs this adaptation of the 1925 classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald with the same visual verve and musical flare that he tackled the Bard’s work in the excellent Romeo + Juliet (1996) and the striking Moulin Rouge (2001).
It is this sense of everything is possible, how timelines converge musically, how the silver screen is made to look magical and how picture and music converge to create incredible-looking sequences. It’s a mix of a romantic and majestic pastel paintbrush that he uses to good effect.
As in the way he adapted William Shakespeare’s work, Luhrmann’s emphasis is on the visuals, and here his elaborate eye candy further reinforces one of the novel’s themes – that of superficiality and how much wealth and the people who swim in it can be caught up in the emptiness of it all.
It’s not really in the acting but in the way Luhrmann whizzes around with his camera, focuses on his cast and frames them that gives this movie its breadth and space. He is boosted forward with dollops of CGI animation which when coupled with the combination of jazz and classical with contemporary pop makes for an unusual yet very plucky approach to storytelling.
It’s the way he handles the meshing together of music and styles that gives The Great Gatsby its musical barometer.
Highlights have to be Beyoncé’s Crazy in love, Lana Del Rey’s Young and Beautiful and Jack White’s version of U2’s Love is Blindness.
On the casting side Maguire plays his usual self, with his eyes being almost a window for the film’s audience to peek into the film.
DiCaprio is perfectly haunted and tortured. He is a man who seems to be missing something and he knows that there is a vacuum inside him.
Mulligan has a face to die for, and Luhrmann utilises this to the max and he embellishes the screen with it, adding to the film’s almost hallucinatory and dreamy look. Debicki gives a stand-out performance in what could be a good launching pad for her career.
With Del Rey being so overall ravishing and resplendent I could not but feel helplessly caught in the way she sadly belts out such lines as: “Will you still love me when I am no longer young and beautiful?” It sets the mood and tone for the film, of how time passes, beauty fades and exposes the decay underneath.
The Great Gatsby makes an eloquent case for everyone of us to look beyond the beauty and excess, and the fact that once the partying is done steps have to be taken to go forward in life.