When I first heard that Baz Lurhmann would be directing The Great Gatsby, I thought of only one thing; this movie will be hit or miss. I’m not the biggest Baz Lurhmann and to be honest, I hated the trailers. To me it was trying to be too modern to for something so classic and old fashioned. I had very low expectations for this movie. Turns out, this movie wasn’t all too bad. It was hit and miss.
The film takes place through a series of narrations by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire). These narrations occur long after the events between Nick and Gatsby. We are introduced to a depressed, rock bottom Nick who vents his feelings to his psychiatrist. Through his sessions, he opens up to the psychiatrist about Jay Gatsby, the most hopeful man he had ever met. Talking about Gatsby has helped Nick’s sobriety so the psychiatrist suggests he writes about them.
From that point on it is all flashbacks starting with Nick as a young man moving to the West Egg part of Long Island, where he becomes next door neighbors with Jay Gatsby, a man who throws epic, lavish parties, yet people know so little about him. Until one day, Gatsby personally invites Nick to a party. Nick accepts, not realizing he is the only person who was ever invited to any of Gatsby’s parties. This is where Nick first encounters the mysterious Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Gatsby stays generally faithful to F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and gives it the sensory overload that you would imagine. The love triangle between Gatbsy, Tom Buchanan (A very beefy Joel Edgerton) and Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) should have been the strongest point of the film. In fact it was the weakest. The chemistry between DiCaprio and Mulligan was nearly non existent. Overall the movie had a wonderful aesthetic behind it through the eyes of Lurhmann, but completely lacked any soul at all.
Join the conversation