Time of excess, great expectations

MANILA, Philippines - Expectations, all of them great, are what the viewer has to hurdle if he is to enjoy watching The Great Gatsby. It is almost 90 years old and considered one of the best novels ever written. It is by F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose affecting prose made him one of the greatest figures in American literature. And then there are the characters. Millions have read the novel and they have all formed ideas about everything, from how Jay Gatsby should look and how bright the green light at the end of the pier should be.

We also know what to expect from Baz Luhrmann. The Australian director is the master of excess. This was evident in his flamboyant takes on the intensity of dance competition in Strictly Ballroom; in the pride and passion of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet on the streets of Miami; and in the simmering desperation of Moulin Rouge in the attics of Paris. He imagined each tale in the most elaborate manner possible and then splashed his vivid creations on the screen with generous helpings of colors and sounds.

It may initially seem that Fitzgerald and Luhrmann are so different in eras and sensibility that there was no way their works would fuse together. The Great Gatsby though showed them to be an easy fit. I do not know if he coined the phrase, but Fitzgerald certainly popularized the term Jazz Age to describe the Roaring Twenties. This was the setting for most of his novels and stories, where his easy way with words realized images of the period that live on to this day.

The words Jazz Age conjure up an era of pulsating music, crime, booze, sex, newly-discovered freedoms and unreachable dreams happening all together under a pall of mortality. Luhrmann has dealt masterfully with all those elements in his films. So why not take on The Great Gatsby, which has them all in abundance. Most of all, the era was also a time of excess.

Fitzgerald’s tale is quite simple. Poor boy Jay Gatsby and rich girl Daisy Buchanan fall in love but do not end up together. Years later, Gatsby, now a millionaire with a shady past, arrives to occupy the mansion across the lake from where Daisy lives with her husband. He is determined to win Daisy back and night after night, he throws extravagant parties hopeful that one day, lured by the lights and the music, Daisy would show up and love him again.

She does show up but the love he was reaching for fails to happen. It never does in Fitzgerald’s stories. Daisy, his quintessential heroine, whose voice, he wrote, “is full of money,” is shown up as shallow and insensitive. His men always end up losers, done in by their love or maybe, I should say, by their obsession for a woman. And Gatsby, the American dream of the Jazz Age is the poor boy who reached the stars but because of the prevailing class divide was not allowed to become one of them. 

What makes The Great Gatsby a masterpiece is Fitzgerald’s writing, how his sentences and the spaces in between can so fill the imagination. “There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights,” his narrator Nick Carraway says in one of the most familiar passages in the book. “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” It is now Lurhmann’s task to bring this and other images to life on the screen.

Luhrmann’s Gatsby is loud and big on 3D and totally his. All his trademark moves are present. The fast-paced edit, breathtaking camera work, lavish production design and soundtrack that goes from Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue to Beyoncé singing Amy Winehouse. But just as he remained respectful of Shakespeare in his Romeo & Juliet, Luhrmann stays close to the original plot and spirit of the story.

This is most evident in how, just like in the book, he gently peeled away the garish trappings of the first half to reveal the real Gatsby, a pathetic, melancholy figure who tried to repeat the past by reaching for that green light on Daisy’s dock. Of course, he got excellent help in this regard with his leading man. Leonardo DiCaprio, a sensitive actor with old-time movie-star charisma is ideal for the part. He is effortlessly sad, awkward, mysterious and devilishly attractive. Can you think of anybody around who can look like he does in a pink suit?

Luhrmann has assembled a very good cast. Carey Mulligan as Daisy looks and speaks the part. Joel Edgerton as her rich, bigoted husband is the typical movie villain of old. Jason Clarke and Isla Fisher as the poor couple whose lives get enmeshed with their moneyed neighbors and Amitabh Bachchan as a gangster all turn in competent performances. 

The only one who does not seem to blend with the total picture is Tobey Maguire who plays the narrator Nick Carraway. It is through his eyes that the tale of Gatsby unfolds and it is quite distracting to hear his familiar voice reading Fitzgerald instead of saying, “With great power comes great responsibility.”