The Not So Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" has a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest novels of its time, speaking as it does with the voice of America's post-WWI "Lost Generation." In that regard, I place it alongside Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" as one of the dazzling crown jewels of 1920's American literature. Therefore, I very much wanted to like the latest film version of an American classic. I was sadly disappointed for the following reasons.

Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby is one of the most visually stunning films ever made. It's brilliant, it's gorgeous, it's overwhelming. And that's its major flaw, because for most of the film the characters and story-line remain hidden, buried beneath a ponderous heap of glamour and glitz.

The ghost of Fitzgerald/Nick Carraway hovers round in the narrative voice-over, but that adds to the confusion because the narrator/observer's faint early 20th century whisper seems incongruous, stilted, anachronistic and at times ludicrous as it strains to be heard over the booming techno pop, hip-hop twenty-first century noise. Only toward the end, in the dramatic climax, denouement and ending does the tragedy of Fitzgerald's tale break through the ash-heap's surface and shine like the light on Daisy Buchanan's dock.

I mentioned the ash-heap and the green light, familiar imagery to anyone who's read the novel. We see these images vividly portrayed in the Oculist's eye billboard overlooking the Valley of Ashes and the light at the end of the dock. But a story is more than symbolic imagery; it is primarily about the characters, their thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions, conflicts and resolutions. These dramatic elements put meaning into what is otherwise empty symbolism. In this film version, the preeminent dramatic elements don't come out until the final scenes, when the soundtrack is turned down, the glitz and glamour are stripped away, and the actors are permitted to act.

Fitzgerald's novel is of a particular time and place and I believe a film version ought to be true to the period. The 1974 film starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston and Bruce Dern, directed by Jack Clayton and produced by David Merrick from Francis Ford Coppola's screenplay is about as close to Fitzgerald and his Jazz Age New York tragedy as you can get, and for that reason I recommend it. On the other hand, for those who like mash-ups, Magical Realism, Steam punk, comic books, video games, cartoons, and Las Vegas spectacles, the new Gatsby might be the thing. However, to quote a popular Gershwin song of Fitzgerald's generation, the new, amped up, glammed up, glitzy Gatsby is "not for me".
The Great Gatsby