Gatsby versus Gatsby

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.