The Great Gatsby 2013
I remember when this movie came out that it made a big splash, but did not get great reviews. The director, Baz Luhrmann, had hit it big with Moulin Rouge twelve years earlier and a movie set in the roaring twenties seemed like a good fit. Then recently I was reading up on Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and I found out the golden High Priestess of the Sovereigns, played by Elizabeth Debicki, had also been in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby has an impressive cast, but really only a few roles are remotely fleshed out. Of course the movie centers on Jay Gatsby, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, but more often he is just described by the guy telling the story, Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire. Voiceover is rarely a great way to tell a story, even with copy (I assume) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. DiCaprio makes a very good Gatsby, but who could be expected to make “old sport” work this many times? It has been a long time since I read the novel and I didn’t remember a lot of what happened from the book. Luhrmann adds a lot of his own visual flourishes to cars, houses, parties, and New York City of the period. It is flashy, but maybe not as compelling as in Moulin Rouge, with less upbeat music (a mix of Gershwin and will.i.am, which doesn’t really work), rarely in the foreground for long since this isn’t a musical. The story is kind of old hat by now and maybe hard to turn into a good movie, with even the Robert Redford version getting pretty bad reviews in its day. There are a couple of big acting scenes which maybe could have been more effective if they were quieter with more focus on some of the scheming instead of on just showing things as they happen. The acting isn’t that great, especially from Maguire, but Joel Edgerton overplays his part. And that’s about it. Carey Mulligan as Daisy is mostly just a trophy to be won and while Debicki is in the central group of characters, she barely says anything the whole movie, though her 6'-3” frame works well in flapper fashions. It took several nights to work through the movie (especially the last hour), which probably didn’t help either and made it seem even longer than it is, though it does seem like a lot could be cut if the focus were on the characters instead of the lifestyle and Maguire’s character. Maybe what worked for the novel was the writing style and painting a picture of the era, less than a compelling plot or characters, but that doesn’t leave much for a movie.
Written: 16 Oct 2020
Owned on: Digital