Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

Steve Sailer has a half-review of The Great Gatsby here. It's nice to know that I wasn't the only one who waited until the week before it comes out on DVD.

Director Baz Luhrmann is another that I keep an eye on, having enjoyed Romeo + Juliet but also having walked out of Moulin Rouge twice. I don't have a problem with the flash of his style except that it's so infuriatingly empty. He has a great sense of just how much can be put on the screen but no idea how to connect all that stuff to the themes of the story.

The flash is equally pointless in Gatsby but it didn't bother me as much, except for one trick repeated from Moulin Rouge in which the camera pulls away from the parties to show the entire dark city. I guess Luhrmann thinks this looks impressive even though it's a basic violation of film language--zoom in for significance, zoom out for perspective. Seeing Gatsby's enormous house dwarfed by Manhattan makes his parties look like no big deal. It's like seeing a red octagon with the word "GO" written on it.

Luhrmann would probably find the most success if he kept his glittery hands off of Important Works. No one thought Gatsby needed more Jay-Z songs, but an old Danielle Steele novel might. He doesn't seem to be a good story generator, so he needs source material, but he aims too high--Shakespeare doesn't need to be Bazzed-up.

Luhrmann's Gatsby reminds me of George Roy Hill's Slaughterhouse-Five in that neither director seemed to particularly care about the novels, opting instead to faithfully adapt the story without spending much time thinking about the themes. Zack Snyder's Watchmen was the same way, a very shallow and literal translation. In Gatsby this is most clear in the character of Daisy--Sailer's friend said it best:

Daisy Buchanan, of course, is supposed to be shallow - but I couldn't tell if Luhrmann understood that, or if he thought she was just dandy.   

I can say that this is the first movie since This Boy's Life that I enjoyed watching Leonardo DiCaprio; he's very charismatic here and seems to be having fun. His performance also showed me why so many prominent directors like working with him:  he does exactly what they ask him to do, even if it's wrong. In the scene in which Gatsby reconnects with Daisy, DiCaprio goes way over the top, turning the film into a teen virginity comedy for a few minutes. I suspect the choice was Luhrmann's.

And of course my usual complaint--why did it have to be two-and-a-half hours long?