Baz Does "Gatsby"

I've been putting this one off for a while, but Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" is a film that requires some attention, for the scope of its grand ambitions if nothing else. Also, I'm fairly sure that I'm the only one who is going to be comparing it to Zack Snyder's "Watchmen," another deeply troubled adaptation of beloved source material.

So for those of you who didn't read the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel in school, "Gatsby" takes place in the early 1920s on Long Island, where a young bond salesman named Nick Carraway (Toby McGuire) rents a house next door to the palatial mansion of a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), who throws wild parties constantly, but is rarely seen. Across the bay lives Nick's cousin Daisy (Cary Mulligan), who has married a rich polo player, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). One night Nick is invited to one of Gatsby's parties and becomes caught up in his neighbor's seemingly charmed life. It turns out that Daisy and Gatsby have history together, and Gatsby is keen to reconnect, with Nick's help.

Set at the height of the Roaring Twenties, when jazz and flappers and loose morals were in full swing, "Gatsby" has become associated with a bygone era of American decadence that Baz Luhrmann was clearly keen to exploit. Much of the film's budget goes to the massive parties thrown by Gatsby, in an ornately decorated estate where everything seems to be embossed with his initials. The whole film boasts magnificently stylized visuals, full of bright colors and art deco flourishes. Luhrmann has always been a showman at heart, and here he unleashes the full bag of tricks to make this far and away the best looking "Gatsby" ever filmed. And with Jay-Z handling the anachronistic, but appropriate soundtrack, the aural magnificence matches the visuals.

The trouble is that the spectacle only gets Luhrmann so far. He's perfectly faithful to the Fitzgerald prose, perhaps even leaning on it too heavily at times with Nick Carraway's on-the-nose narration. However, Luhrmann seems reluctant to really engage with the novel's major themes, and the heightened reality he creates leaves little room for subtlety. Each new twist and turn in the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby lands with a hammer-force blow, and every major epiphany is underlined several times. For instance, there's the famous scene where Gatsby is showing off his wardrobe to Daisy, who famously starts crying, and can only blurt out that she's never seen "such beautiful shirts." Luhrmann sees fit to add narration from Nick Carraway on top, explaining exactly what she's feeling.

The actors do what they can to breathe some life into characters who keep threatening to turn into caricatures. Leonardo DiCaprio makes an excellent Jay Gatsby, giving him an easy charm, bullheaded stubbornness, and deep personal flaws. Cary Mulligan makes shallow, spoiled Daisy at least sympathetic, but she doesn't get much opportunity to dig any deeper. Joel Edgerton was a nice surprise, elevating Tom above the usual villainous cliches. Sadly it's Toby McGuire who is the weak link. I'm still trying to decide if he was miscast or if Luhrmann's more morose, emotional version of Nick Carraway was the problem.

It's a little startling how much Baz Luhrmann imposes his sensibilities on the material, and how distracting it becomes. The movie shares almost the same basic structure with "Moulin Rouge!" for instance, including the story being framed by scenes of Nick Carraway as a depressed alcoholic, who bangs out the story of Jay Gatsby on his typewriter, while the narrative is relayed through his flashbacks. There are also the odd comedy beats that find their way into the movie early on, like Gatsby micromanaging the tea party that he's asked Nick to host, so that he can have a private meeting with Daisy.

And this is where the "Watchmen" comparisons come in. Zack Snyder had similarly good intentions when adapting the Alan Moore graphic novel, displayed a similar passion for the material, and was in some ways faithful to a fault to his text. However, he was far more interested in creating a spectacle than in really grappling with the questions that "Watchmen" presented. And Snyder's trademark use of stylized violence is completely inappropriate. As a result, his film feels shallow and misses the point, though there are some outstanding individual sequences.

"The Great Gatsby" has similar flaws. Luhrmann does do a few things right, giving us some evocative visuals and setting the stage for some good performances, but he glosses over the complexities of the story in favor if his trademark glitz. And in the end, he has to have Nick Carraway spell out nearly all the big messages for us, because it seems that Luhrmann can't figure out how to convey them to us cinematically.

Baz Luhrmann's "Gatsby" is entertaining, but Fitzgerald it ain't.
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