Expectations were great for Baz Luhrmann’s remake of the classic novel, The Great Gatsby. The movie of the same title was, unfortunately, a flashy extravaganza that submerged and diluted the narrative that would have been beautiful had it been left alone.
It is laudable that the auteur maintained his distinctly stylish and flamboyant cinematography. Only this time the flamboyant was cloyed; despite the sparkles and colors, there was no wowing moment that itched my jaw to drop. Rather, the excess of dazzles only made the movie a pretentious work of an amateur.
Editing further exaggerated the flamboyant color of the movie. Pacing was too quick in the first half that the movie became disconcerting and difficult to follow. One terse shot after another simply threw the pieces of the story at the audience, instead of presenting one smooth and flowing tale. Lurhmann seems to have put an effort to use many exact quotes from the book, which when adapting to crunch a dense plot into a two-hour movie, skipped rapidly and incoherently forward.
Surprisingly, the highly anticipated soundtrack also subtracted from the film. It came across to me as a source of distraction; the amazing soundtrack that I had been replaying for a week was transformed and played at unexpected places. It became noise and distracted the audience away from essential dialogue and narrative.
Another source of distraction was the flashback narrative of Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire. Luhrmann interprets Carraway’s creation of the novel in an original way unseen in the actual literature. The retrospective narrative of Nick (Tobey Maguire) is analogous to Lurhmann’s 2001 film, Moulin Rouge!, where the protagonist tells the story as he writes on his typewriter. Luhrmann seems to have a penchant for such narrative (and it’s great that he followed his gut-feeling), but the retrospection was an unnecessarily dominant and distracting part of the film.
In the end, the film was an overstated and disorganized mush gathered from talented A-list actors, musicians, costume designers, and et cetera. The actors were essentially superb and wonderfully in sync as the characters themselves; the artists had created exciting and catchy tracks specifically for the movie; the costumes represented a fun and vivid 20’s rebellious vibe. Yet, the combined product of such fantastic elements of the film was nothing but a large-scale mess.
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