![]() Luhrmann didn't set out to make a PBS-style, bare-bones adaptation, but there are times when it feels as though he secretly wants to. Once that happens, the Luhrmannerisms distract from the film's true heart: the actions and feelings of its characters. So do the anachronistic soundtrack mash-ups (modern hip-hop layered over ragtime piano and the like).īut in the film's dark second half, "The Great Gatsby" half-forgets its mandate to wow us and zeroes in on actors in rooms. The CGI-assisted camera acrobatics feel obligatory. ![]() From frame one, they're Dionysian whirls of booze, lust and hero worship, minus the sense that that things are ebbing and flowing as they would at a real party. This framing device is inferred from statements Fitzgerald made in "The Crack-Up," and "Gatsby" often refers to itself as a book, so even though it isn't officially part of the source, it's hardly a blasphemous indulgence still, it's one more buffer between viewer and story in a movie that already has more than its share.Īll this busywork might astonish if Lurhmann's heart were in it-but is it? The guests at Gatsby's party are too obviously directed, and there's no sense of escalation in the gatherings. ![]() ![]() We see the book's Prohibition-era settings (East Egg and West Egg, New York City, and the sooty wasteland in between) through the eyes of the narrator, Nick Carraway ( Tobey Maguire), who's writing a memoir-confession from an asylum. ![]() If you've seen Lurhmann's " Strictly Ballroom," " Romeo + Juliet" or " Moulin Rouge," or watched "Gatsby" trailers, you know what you're in for: an epic melodrama that fuses old-movie theatrics and subjective filmmaking, period music and modern pop, real sets and unreal landscapes, psychological drama and speeded-up slapstick. ![]()
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