Chances are you read “The Great Gatsby” in high school, because its status as The Great American Novel has been a long-building thing, even though Fitzgerald’s novel was initially a flop. The author would die (and be buried in nearby Rockville, Maryland) before it became a success, and it has been adapted a few times before, most notably in 1974, starring Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby and Mia Farrow as his much-longed-for love, Daisy Buchanan. Aesthetically speaking, that version was beautiful, but it was also too dry, too contained, too much about love instead of moral decay. Because ultimately “The Great Gatsby” is a book not about pretty rich people who can’t catch a break romantically but about the dangers of “living too long with a single dream”—of relying on wealth and opulence for substance and worth. A critique of the Jazz Age, of wasted youth and beauty and cynicism and mendacity, “The Great Gatsby” is not about the parties. It’s about the loneliness afterward.
And so we have Luhrmann, who has made a career of throwing excess and excess and excess at the screen and calling it profundity; that sounds like a criticism, but it’s not. His “Romeo + Juliet” is feverish and dreamlike, wonderfully successful in its juxtaposition of a modern setting with Shakespeare’s original text. And “Moulin Rouge!” was similarly exuberant but dangerous, impeccably crafted and choreographed. Luhrmann uses anachronistic musical choices often in his works, and he gets flack for always saying “more” instead of “less,” but what else could have worked for “The Great Gatsby,” a movie about the very dangers of such thinking? When Luhrmann needs to be on, he is—Gatsby’s party scenes are spectacular, a dizzying array of glitter and sequins and tinsel and confetti and champagne and fireworks. And yet that’s only the first 45 minutes or so of the film, before Luhrmann shows a restraint that matches Fitzgerald’s original aching prose—which, thankfully, Luhrmann overwhelmingly uses. There are very few scenes with new dialogue (Luhrmann and writing partner Craig Pearce did the screenplay), and none of it sticks out; instead, how Luhrmann has integrated it all is, for the most part, fairly fluid, fairly seamless.
The story is this: It’s the summer of 1922 in Long Island, where Midwesterner and Yale graduate Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) has moved to become a bond salesman. He’s renting a cottage in the shadow of a Disney princess-like mansion on West Egg, and across the bay from his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan, of “Drive”), who lives in a similarly great mansion with her husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton, of “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” “The Thing,” “Warrior,” and “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”), who went to Yale with Nick. The Buchanans come from old money, as do the other residents of East Egg, whereas the inhabitants of West Egg are new money; both groups are prone to showing off their wealth. And so each weekend Nick comes to expect the overwhelming parties thrown by his neighbor, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio, of “Inception” and “Shutter Island”), a man so reclusive that Nick doesn’t see him for weeks.
Until one day, when Nick receives an invitation to attend a soiree, drowning in champagne, awash with fireworks, thumping with music, full of celebrities. Nick finds Daisy’s friend Jordan (Elizabeth Debicki) there, and she tells him a secret that Gatsby told her: That he and Daisy share a past, one in which Gatsby was penniless and Daisy was young and beautiful; one in which Gatsby went off to World War I and Daisy married Tom instead. Nick is shocked by the story, until Gatsby asks him a favor: Would he mind inviting Daisy over for tea so Gatsby can see her again, old sport? It’s been five years, and it’s time for Gatsby to “repeat the past”—to make Daisy realize that she never loved Tom Buchanan, and that they should be together instead.
And so “The Great Gatsby” becomes about a series of misguided illusions and fantasies, all had by people who are, to varying degrees: corrupt and terrible. Tom is having an affair with a local mechanic’s working-class wife, Myrtle (Isla Fisher, of “Rise of the Guardians,” “Bachelorette,” “Rango,” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic”), but he’s suspicious of Gatsby’s presence in their lives, of his friendship with Nick, of what seems to be a connection between him and Daisy. Daisy is the kind of enchanting and vapid woman whose voice is “full of money,” who has been pampered all her life, and who hopes her daughter grows up to be a “beautiful little fool” because that’s the easiest thing. And Gatsby is a man who poured all of his energy and vitality into a single dream, and who amassed wealth and riches and exquisite things just to win one woman—a woman who, of course, represented for him far more than just love.
That all sounds very heavy indeed, and thankfully, Luhrmann tries hard to capture it all, even if his initial framing device—Nick in a sanitarium, telling this whole story to an enthralled doctor who encourages him to write it all down—is particularly silly. He also undoubtedly makes another poor choice in cutting Nick’s relationship with Jordan, which is in the book, since that move from Fitzgerald pulled Nick further into Jordan’s world with Daisy and Tom instead of keeping him separate and outside. Also disappointing are Fisher, who does an exceedingly awful job as Myrtle, making her a revolting caricature instead of remotely appealing; Jason Clarke as her husband George Wilson, whose religiousness from the book is cut, making him thoroughly one-note here; and some of the uses of 3-D and modern music. Regarding the 3-D, the effect adds depth to the party scenes and Gatsby’s mansion, but in other significant moments—like when Nick gazes out at a New York City apartment building, and particular windows pop forward at us—it’s asininely amateurish. And although some modern songs work quite well (Florence and the Machine’s “Over the Love” and Lana del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” are most effectively used), the abundance of tracks from Jay-Z, who helped score the film, is jarringly grating.
But jeez, does Luhrmann get so much other stuff right: the aching, saddening effect of the green light from Daisy’s dock, the hard edge of maniacal anger in Gatsby, the boorish pompousness of Tom, the anarchic glee of Gatsby’s parties, the sad loneliness of his house without them. It helps that Luhrmann pulls us into this gorgeous, false world and that DiCaprio and Mulligan, the film’s standouts, keep us there with their performances. Although Mulligan presents a Daisy who is more sympathetic than was depicted in the book, she remains simultaneously captivating and worthy of your loathing; the enthralled glances she gives Gatsby work wonders to sell her as a caring and considerate person, setting up a greater blowback when we learn she’s nothing of the sort. And DiCaprio as Gatsby—can someone just give the man an Oscar already? He utterly captures the man’s mysterious appeal, that genuineness that neither Daisy nor Tom nor Jordan have. His yearning is his greatest mistake, and DiCaprio plays it just right.
How you consider Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” will depend on one thing, really—is Gatsby to be admired for any reason at all? Luhrmann certainly thinks so, allowing DiCaprio to dazzle and suggesting that Daisy may have once been worthy of his love. Fitzgerald’s original novel isn’t that forgiving—he decidedly does not present a love story we should be rooting for—but both the book and the film share the kind of tragic ending that prods at our interiority. Luhrmann presents us with a fantasy, and then does his best to dismantle it—he gives us both Gatsby’s foul dust and his dream—and while “The Great Gatsby” isn’t flawless, it may be as close to the green light as we’re going to get.
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