"The Great Gatsby" (2013) Review

After a tumultuous post-production process that saw two changes in release date, Baz Luhrmann's highly-anticipated rendition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has finally found its "green light" by being released in theaters this Mothers' Day weekend.

The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) during one summer in Long Island, New York at the peak of the "Roaring 20s", an era of loose morals, cheap liquor, and energetic jazz music. Nick spends the summer with his cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan), her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), and a famous golf star named Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki). When away from them, Nick stays at a small cottage directly next door to the castle-like home of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man who always seems to be throwing New York's most highfalutin parties. As the two become friends, Nick is drawn further into the world of the super-rich, their illusions, their dreams, and learns the great truth behind his neighbor's mysterious life.

When I read the book in high school, it became one of my all-time favorites. To this day, Gatsby remains as intriguing as it was to me then and has been to readers for nearly a century. Luhrmann's bold cinematic vision has reminded me why I came to love the story in the first place, while adding some of the director's trademark flair as seen in movies like Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!

Even though I loved the book, I don't consider myself a Gatsby "purist" necessarily. That's a title I usually reserve for English teachers or super-fans like my high school principal, Mrs. McQueen, who literally named her son after F. Scott Fitzgerald. That may have been the reason why I bought into the film's hyper-stylized, 3-D presentation and use of contemporary music. What normally would seem out of place for a 1920's setting actually works rather well. The contemporary party music sounds like the same pop-fluff we'd hear pulsating in nightclubs today, but it takes cues from the popular "big band" jazz numbers of the setting's era. The slower tracks blend into their respective scenes and match the narrative perfectly.

As for the production design and visual effects, they're nothing short of dazzling. Luhrmann's Long Island looks like the perfect place to spend a long summer, complete with golf, swimming pools, beaches, and beautiful women. Gatsby's glitter-filled, liquor-fueled parties are certainly over-the-top, but the vision itself captures the essence of the era and makes it accessible to mainstream audiences. The tightrope Luhrmann walks in trying to do justice to what Fitzgerald envisioned in his book and getting contemporary moviegoers interested in this story is a wobbly one. But this version of Gatsby manages to achieve the proper balance, which is something too many cinematic adaptations of other works have failed to do.

The script itself, from Luhrmann and Craig Pearce (Moulin Rouge!), sticks closely to the book's text, while taking a few creative liberties. For instance, Nick spends the film in a sanitarium narrating the events of the film as he therapeutically writes them down. I didn't mind this, though, because by the end Nick can be viewed as an in-story double for Fitzgerald himself, which I thought was pretty cool.

Along with the strong script and production design, Leonardo DiCaprio leads a star-studded cast who all give worthy performances. DiCaprio is marvelous as Gatsby. I'm not sure there's an actor working in Hollywood today that could do justice to the character better than DiCaprio. The only other man who could come close might be Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But as it stands, DiCaprio simply IS Gatsby. He's a millionaire who has everything and nothing at the same time. You feel for him as he reaches for that elusive "green light" of hope across the bay, and you want him to be with the woman he loves. The only aspect of the character that felt milked was the use of his classic pet phrase "old sport". The Great Gatsby is sure to be a big seller on Blu-Ray and DVD for the purpose of playing an "old sport" drinking game. In doing that, you may not make it to the end of the movie, but you may still be "borne ceaselessly into the past", depending on what kind of drunk you are.

Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man) fares well as Nick. He has excellent chemistry with DiCaprio and serves as a strong narrator. This is my favorite performance from him to date.
Rounding out the leads are Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan and Carey Mulligan as his wife and object of Gatsby's affections, Daisy. Edgerton's performance oozes with the masculinity needed to bring a character like Tom to life. As his muse, Mulligan wears her heart on her sleeve and does her best work in the tense scenes where she's in the presence of both Tom and Gatsby together.

I went into Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby with diminished expectations after the earliest reviews came out mixed. While some "purists" may find fault with the use of the contemporary music, the visual effects, and the creative liberties taken with the screenplay, I consider myself a fan of the book who's satisfied with the film that Luhrmann has created. He achieves a rare balance between source-material loyalty and sheer cinematic entertainment thanks to some bold set pieces, a talented cast that never feels out of place, and a script that sticks close to the text of the book.

Surely, Mr. Fitzgerald would be pleased, old sport.

8/10