The Great Gatsby (2013)

Australia, USA; 142min

Drama, Romance

Director: Baz Luhrmanm

Writers: Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce, F. Scott Fitzgerald (novel) 
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire

The Great Gatsby is based on a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald with the same name which is is widely considered to be a literary classic. The book wasn't a success until the World War II and it became a part of high school curriculum in the following decades. The book has remained popular since, leading to numerous stage and film adaptations.

Latest adaptation was done by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce who worked together on Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge. Who is familiar with Luhrmann's work won't be surprised with his vision of this great story but others could be, which fortunately doesn't need to end badly.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a Yale graduate from the Midwest who gets a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant parties. On the other side of the bay is a home of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), and her husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), a college acquaintance of Nick's. Soon Nick gets invited to one of Gatsby's parties (later he learns that he was the only one, ever, to receive an invitation). There he meets the mysterious Gatsby and slowly learns that he knows and is in love with Nick's cousin Daisy from across the bay. As Nick helps him to meet with her he starts discovering more about Gatsby and his life and soon becomes the only one who cared about him and not only about his money. The two of them created a real friendship which ended with Nick writing a story about it in an asylum.

Although movie fallows the novel pretty well it didn't manage to show main points. Fitzgerald wanted to present the Jazz Age, when jazz music and dance became popular and wider cultural changes during that period. You just don't present the Jazz age with Jay-Z and dubstep (which completely destroyed the big party scene), two second shots and CGI which often looks like cartoon or at least very similar to the one from Sin City. Also, the novel provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties, era known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz, flapper culture and organized crime while the movie is almost completely concentrated on the love story which is only one of the ways Fitzgerald tried to criticized that historical period. But we won't take those facts as major disadvantages of the story since we have to look at this movie primary as independent work.

What we will take as disadvantage is fast paced editing which sometimes can literally cause a seizure. There probably aren't any no-CGI shots longer than 3 seconds and sometimes is hard to notice anything around characters which is tragedy since the scenery is wonderful and those who weren't enjoying in story could enjoy in visual impression. Luhrmann's approach to this story was fairy-tale-like which sometimes looked strange but at the end it left good impression and it could be called great move. Shots of old New York are great and CGI in them is wonderful. Well, visually The Great Gatsby is one of strongest movies lately and all that kitsch in it fits well. Only negative critic on visual part are car driving scenes which look like the ones from  Frank Miller's Sin City, only more colorful. They look great but that way of shooting it just don't fit to the atmosphere of the movie.

The story itself is very good, primary because almost everybody will find something interesting that they will follow. If you aren't the lover of romance (which is pretty solid here) you'll maybe be interested in Nick's entering into the New York's high class, or maybe in mystery around Gatsby or in way of life almost one hundred years ago. There's something for almost anybody in here.

Characters leave great impression. It's hard to forget Gatsby, Nick, Daisy and Tom and the credit for that goes to both writing and acting. Performance is top class but we expect nothing less from A-list actors although there was a lot of skepticism around Maguire being Nick but it ended as a positive surprise (not great though). There was some talking about Gatsby being DiCaprio's first bad role in 15 years. That's nonsense. His Gatsby is great, although a little bit different from the original one but he's a pretty complicated character, one of those iconic ones because he can be interpreted in so many ways: a hopeless romantic, a completely obsessed wacko or a dangerous gangster clinging to wealth with one very irritating habit, the phrase old sport. That phrase is said 55 times during the movie; all but four of those times are delivered by Gatsby which means that he delivered it in average every 2,7 minutes!

All in all The Great Gatsby is a solid adaptation of Fitzgerald work. It missed some of main points of the novel but it is made for modern viewers so it's probably on purpose. It's visually strong, with way too paced editing, good multilayer story, terrible soundtrack in the first half and great performance. Definitely worth of seeing.