Gatsby: It's Not Great, but What Is It?

I know F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel pretty well -- there was a time I could have told you which chapter lines resided in the short work (125 pages?).

So, seeing someone like Baz Luhrmann try to put it on screen was not something I looked forward to.

And I was uncertain of the casting of Tobey Maguire, Leo DiCaprio, and Carey Mulligan.

It's a lavishly filmed movie, which isn't a surprise given Luhrmann's career.  The much-hyped music was not a big element -- all those artists puffed in various ads just don't seem to be there.  There are snippets, but you never say "oh, that's Jay-Z, let's listen"...it's more of a skimming, brief background music.

One surprise is how faithful Luhrmann remained to the book.  In fact, maybe overly so, with Maguire's Nick Carraway "writing" Fitzgerald's words in both voice over and literally on the screen.  Too much? Probably.  The floating boats at the end just don't work...where's the actual visual of the boats (yeah, I know it's a metaphor)?

DiCaprio is okay as Gatsby.  Jay Gatsby is such an enigmatic figure, it's hard to say this is what an actor should do to make him work.  DiCaprio has the awkwardness of Gatsby's speech down (who the bleep really calls people "Old Sport"? -- yes, it's like he wants to be too familiar and doesn't quite know how naturally).

Maguire is good as Carraway.  Those faces he's been making since Cider House Rules stand him well here, where the wide-eyed naif is perfect for the just-turning-thirty Nick.

Mulligan is good as Daisy, too, floating from her first scene (famed in the book as she and Jordan Baker seem to float among the curtains as they lay on sofas in the Buchanan living room), light, ephemeral, yes, callow and shallow, too.  Mulligan has that.  She never seems as deep and worthy as Gatsby makes her.

What I found troubling about the movie was the swift change in tone.  After "party city" for the first two-thirds, the whole becomes painful melodrama (another reviewer has called it Nicholas Sparks romance) that slows and loses its life.  The almost unnecessary mano-y-mano scene in the Plaza Hotel is overwrought -- it's not clear it captures Gatsby's naiveté.  He really never has a chance to keep Daisy in his castle (as it is described) & Luhrmann doesn't quite capture that.

In the end, if you don't expect too much -- god knows it's NOT the best movie of the year, and probably not best movie of the month -- and don't hope for more than a bit of fun and a bit of melodrama, you'll be okay.

But that leaves this to say: why do we keep returning to this book?  I have seen multiple news shows, most notably the insufferable Chris Matthews, pump the movie, excited about the opening of "the Great American Novel."

I love the book.  And there's not doubt that it is "great" and it is "American."  But that it's the epitome of that art form, well, maybe, but it, like it's name character, is an enigma.  Let's ponder for a moment:

Many have talked about it as "the American dream."  It's hard to not take that to mean Gatsby's dream, which is highly flawed.  Gatsby, or Gatz, has fallen for a Southern ingenue who is shallow enough to marry another man, clearly for his family name and money, a year after her breakup with her supposed beloved.  That she moves on so quickly makes her something that Gatsby, and we the reader/viewer, shouldn't put on a pedestal.  Of course, that's part of the tragedy: Gatsby's passion is misdirected in so many ways.

Are we supposed to overlook that?  Or are we to see it as Fitzgerald's satire on the whole thing? (as many times as I've read it, I've never seen how you can do this -- Fitzgerald is as in love with Gatsby and Daisy as Nick is) What are we to make of our nexus of Gatsby-Nick-Tom?  Tom is brutal and not overly intelligent, though his references to Goddard, etc, make him better read (and he went to Yale, right? though our last president may have damaged that mystique forever) than we might expect.  Surely, we are to admire Gatsby, enjoy Nick, and despise Tom.  But that leaves us admiring a gangster (you certainly have heard the name -- Gatsby -- might derive from the notion of "by gat (gangster slang for a gun)"?), who tries to steal a man's wife (i.e. Luhrmann makes them clearly adulterers), with nice clothes and corny manners.  REally?!?!  That's our choice?  That's the American Dream?

Maybe it's the enigma that makes it so fascinating:  Luhrmann and Bogdanovich (the last one to make a big-budget movie version) just can't resist trying to make that smoke-like quality into something visual and solid.

The greatness of the book is in its enigmatic nature; maybe film-makers should leave it be.

I know that doesn't leave us in a good place as we look at this film, or rethink the novel, but there you have it -- it's a quality challenge.