Some thoughts on Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby.’ That’s right – not F. Scott Fitzgerald’s but Baz Luhrmann’s.
Baz Luhrmann likes dramatic, scene-setting openings. At the beginning of Moulin Rouge!, over darkness, there’s the gentle roar of audience members settling into their seats. Then there’s applause as the screen brightens and a conductor is seen on a stage. There’s no orchestra. Instead, the bright red curtains behind him draw apart to reveal the 20th Century Fox logo, and over the conductor’s hyper-energetic baton-twirling we hear the studio’s famous fanfare. At once, we’re clued in to the theatrical artifice that awaits us. In Romeo + Juliet, the Fox logo appears on a small television screen in the centre of the screen, and a newscaster begins to speak with Shakespearean locutions and the sombre and self-important rise-and-fall cadences of a TV anchor. The legendary play, we realise, is being brought to the media age. In The Great Gatsby, though, the opening is more discreet, the initial credits appearing on a background in the art deco style, with ‘JG’ embossed everywhere, as if on monogrammed towels or cufflinks. This is the Jazz Age. This is about the upper class. This is about Jay Gatsby.
Sweeping aside a million scholarly pronouncements as to what F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is really about – has there been another literary metaphor to rival, in sheer theory-generating capability, the green light at the edge of the Buchanans’s dock? – Luhrmann treats it as a love story. A tragic love story with star-crossed lovers – like Moulin Rouge!, like Romeo + Juliet. Luhrmann has made a bare handful of films, so it’s too soon to single out auteur-like obsessions – but for what it’s worth, this film too is saturated with anachronistic music, its framing device (as in Moulin Rouge!) involves a depressed man and a typewriter, and the images make the eyes pop. Luhrmann’s strength is his unembarrassed embrace of what a more “tasteful” filmmaker would label as vulgarity. When the narrator tells us about an afternoon buoyed by a sort of chemical madness, the word “afternoon” appears on screen in psychedelic colours, as if under the influence. There’s method to this madness.
Luhrmann captures the spirit of the novel in both look and feel, but he never forgets to make it his own. Setting up the scene where we first see Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby’s great lost love, Fitzgerald writes, “A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.” This is exactly how it happens on screen – unlike the scene where Daisy visits Gatsby and takes a tour of his mansion. Fitzgerald writes, “He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray.” As Luhrmann sees it, the bedroom has two levels, and Gatsby, on top, throws the shirts down at Daisy. At least in that instant, she’s no longer above him. He’s risen too, and he’s raining his riches on her.
Luhrmann’s choices, throughout, infuse emotion into a novel that’s a little aloof. In a way, Robert Redford, in the 1970s film version, was closer to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, always withdrawn, never allowing himself to be read easily. As Fitzgerald writes, (“It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.” Even Daisy’s first glimpse of him, after all those years, was in a mirror. But Leonardo DiCaprio is the perfect Gatsby for Luhrmann. Unlike Redford, he externalises the character, playing up both his desperate need for Daisy and his paranoia about losing her. In the scene where he begs Daisy to choose him over her husband, Daisy says, “I did love him once–but I loved you too.” Gatsby’s incredulous response is, “You loved me TOO?” DiCaprio emphasises “loved” as well: “You LOVED me TOO?” In these moments the 3-D extends to the emotions at play. They burst out from the screen, befitting the love story in Luhrmann’s mind.
How important is it to preserve the spirit of a literary work while making a filmic adaptation? I subscribe to the “based on” theory. A film is just based on events and characters in the novel – or, put differently, a film is how a director sees the events and characters in the novel. Oftentimes, when we see or read something, we say, “Oh, I’d have done it differently.” The filmmaker just goes ahead and realises this different vision, which is why it makes no sense to carp that “it was like that in the novel, but it is like this in the film.” Because we’re not seeing The Great Gatsby according to F. Scott Fitzgerald. We’re seeing The Great Gatsby as seen by Baz Luhrmann, with his odd focus on Gatsby’s ring, with the chiming of telephones everywhere, with his use of slow motion both times a character gets hit (first by a lover’s hand, then by a fast car), and with his casting of Amitabh Bachchan as a Jewish gangster named Meyer Wolfsheim. If Luhrmann sees Wolfsheim as dramatic and charismatic as a famous Bollywood star, who are we to argue?
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.
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Aparna
May 31, 2013
Am watching the movie tomorrow; to be honest, after reading this, I’m very tempted to read the book, you quote some really fine lines there. (Btw, the last weekend it was The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which, surprisingly worked better as a movie (for me), than it did as a book. Which is why I chuckled when I read this: ‘which is why it makes no sense to carp that “it was like that in the novel, but it is like this in the film.”’)
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Ramsu
May 31, 2013
I agree completely with your final paragraph: I guess the other analogue, one step further in the same supply chain, is your pet peeve, namely when you write about the movie and what associations you saw, and the discussion ends up being about whether or not the director intended it that way.
We don’t complain when Monet gives us an impression of a sunset (although to be fair, the critics did back then) rather than a more literal representation. Nor, for that matter, do we complain when an author uses a metaphor or a simile to put an idiosyncratic spin on the reality he is describing. Why the double standard with the movies?
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mallika
May 31, 2013
rip rituporno .great moviemaker
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Divya
May 31, 2013
I think you are being too kind in this review (Luhrmann’s strength is his unembarrassed embrace of what a more “tasteful” filmmaker would label as vulgarity)
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ramitbajaj01
May 31, 2013
loved ur article, thanks
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Alpesh Patel
June 1, 2013
Robert Redford appeared on the BBC’s flagship film programme on radio last year. He was asked about his thoughts on The Great Gatsby being made by Luhrmann and what he thought of his version.
Regarding his own version, Redford said he was disappointed with the film because it was too faithful to the book. He asked if you are making a film that is so faithful to the book, what is the point in making the film?
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brangan
June 1, 2013
Alpesh Patel: I don’t think there’s any problem with being “faithful” to the book. It depends on the filmmaker’s vision, how he (with the writer) adapts the essence of the text.
For instance, the Coen brothers’s version of “True Grit” is more faithful to the novel than the John Wayne version, and it’s a fantastic film. Whereas the first two Harry Potter films — which are truer to the text — are big snooze-a-thons, and it’s only when major filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón started playing around with the books that the films came alive.
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KayKay
June 1, 2013
It’s just occurred to me that Leo’s track record for working with A List directors is astounding.
Count ’em:
Steven Spielberg
James Cameron
Ridley Scott
Martin Scorcese (4 movies)
Danny Boyle
Sam Raimi
Christopher Nolan
Quentin Tarantino
Baz Luhrman
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brangan
June 1, 2013
Kay Kay: Nicole Kidman has a similarly impressive track record of working with art-house auteurs. She’s worked with an amazing range of filmmakers.
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Pallavi Bhat (@palvib)
June 4, 2013
I honestly liked the movie better than the book.
I remember reading the book years’ ago and being unhappy with
the hedonistic characters and the language came across as “glorification
of emptiness”. Really, it was just another book.
For me, the choice of the book for the movie, etc is like the American
propaganda.
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aandthirtyeights
June 11, 2013
A cow once ate a roll of film and said, “The book was better.”
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tonks
November 20, 2019
Just watched this on Netflix.
with his casting of Amitabh Bachchan as a Jewish gangster named Meyer Wolfsheim. If Luhrmann sees Wolfsheim as dramatic and charismatic as a famous Bollywood star, who are we to argue?
This came as a total, delightful surprise.
Luhrmann captures the spirit of the novel in both look and feel, but he never forgets to make it his own
Luhrmann’s choices, throughout, infuse emotion into a novel that’s a little aloof. In a way, Robert Redford, in the 1970s film version, was closer to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, always withdrawn, never allowing himself to be read easily.
Perhaps that is why this is one of those rare instances where I liked the movie more than I did the book.
How important is it to preserve the spirit of a literary work while making a filmic adaptation? I subscribe to the “based on” theory. A film is just based on events and characters in the novel – or, put differently, a film is how a director sees the events and characters in the novel
I strongly disagree, I feel very upset when they change the minutest detail in the story of a book I care about. The interpretation can change, perhaps, but the details of the story being changed always seems like a betrayal to me. I’ve read The great Gatsby too many years back to remember if the finer details are the same, but I do remember the broader story and that seemed exactly the same in this movie. I loved the psychedelic colours, and DiCaprio’s passionate interpretation of Gatsby. I like that the story has been changed/ simplified primarily into a love triangle. To be very honest, I’ve never really quite understood all the hype about the book.
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