I’ve come late to this, but the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby is striking. It is everything that you would expect of Luhrmann: sensational, self-conscious and hysterically camp. I doubt that anyone expected a literal interpretation from Luhrmann, but few can have anticipated this total re-imagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beloved classic. The modern score, the cavernous nightclubs, the idiomatic speech — it’s more Gossip Girl than Gershwin.
Doubtless, there will be those who decry Luhrmann’s audacity. But the trailer suggests that he has remained faithful to the book’s core themes: the transience of prosperity, that money is simultaneously everything and nothing, the dangers of obsession and charisma, and the phoniness of most people — Gatsby is betrayed by more than just his habit of calling everyone and everything ‘sport’. If Luhrmann succeeds in emphasising the timelessness of those themes by placing them in a fantastic world that is recognisable as our own, then so be it — that seems to be the sole justification for rehashing such a well-worn story.
Inevitable comparisons will be drawn between Luhrmann’s film and the 1974 adaptation, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. The latter film is often described as ‘wooden’, which is a tad unfair. Francis Ford Coppola’s script was true to the book, which was both its triumph and tragedy.
It ruled out a Luhrmann-esque refashioning of the setting, and therefore placed enormous weight on a character who is barely perceptible in print. Gatsby is, necessarily, vague. His enigmatic past drives the narrative, supported by a few choice devices, such as the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s garden, the louring eyes on the advertising hoarding above the Wilsons’ garage and a few snippets of conversation from peripheral characters, most of which is contradictory. We’re told, variously, that Gatsby was a soldier, an heir, a trader, a bootlegger and a fraud.
The book, and consequently Coppola’s screenplay, is held together by the narrator, Nick Carraway, who is, himself, in the dark throughout most of the action, getting little closer to Gatsby than we do. The great strength of the 1974 film was Sam Waterston, who played Carraway. Waterston seemed to appreciate that Carraway is trying to understand a story rather than merely relate it. In that sense, his experience mirrors the reader’s (and the viewer’s); we follow after Gatsby with him. And, of course, Carraway lies through his teeth on occasions.
It’s difficult to tell from Luhrmann’s trailer how Toby Maguire has portrayed Carraway, or whether Carraway is even central. I can’t help thinking that it would be mistake to marginalise him in favour of more Gatsby and Daisy; but I’m intrigued to see what Luhrmann and Leonardo DiCaprio have made of the ‘Old Sport’ himself.
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