This is a movie I was highly looking forward to and very skeptical of all at the same time before I went to saw it. Like most people, I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic about one of the most volatile decades in our nation's history (other than the 1960's of course) when I was in high school. The first time I read it, unfortunately, I had a teacher who severely over-analyzed it and ruined it for me. Later on in high school I read it again for myself after seeing the Robert Redford version of the movie and fell in love with this tale. It is a tale spanning so many timeless themes such as love, betrayal, anger and revenge.
I have to admit that I was captivated at the idea of this film from the time I saw the first trailer for it about 6 months ago. When I saw that it would be directed by Baz Luhrmann, I was even more excited. While I am not a huge fan of the movies, the visuals that he portrays in both Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet are tremendously beautiful. Luhrmann has a nack for taking the past and giving it modern flare without losing out on the plot. In Romeo + Juliet he takes Shakespeare's script verbatim and instead of setting it in 17th century Verona, he puts it in what looks like late 20th century southern California. In Moulin Rouge he makes an old love story, sets it obviously in the past, but has his characters singing very modern songs. It is beautifully done, and The Great Gatsby is no different.
In this film, we see the beauty and majesty of the Roaring 20's complete with the lavish costumes and even more lavish parties, thrown by the millionaire Jay Gatsby. Even with that, we have a soundtrack of modern hip-hop and see the characters dancing to the music as it plays. Luhrmann does a great job of making sure we don't see this as a music montage with some dialogue included. He pays perfect homage to Fitzgerald's beautifully written story by pulling much of Nick Carraway's narration directly from the prose written by Fitzgerald himself. It is very beautifully done.
The acting in this movie was top notch also. I am generally weary of casts billed as "all-star" such as in Ocean's Eleven, but this movie did it perfectly. You could tell that none of the actors were fighting for having themselves be notable in comparison to the others. Three time Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio gave what I believe is his best performance since Blood Diamond, which garnered him his most recent Oscar nod some 7 years ago (disclaimer - I have not seen his performance in Django Unchained but do know many believe it to be the best of his career). While it will not get him an awards nomination, DiCaprio's performance, and screen presence, is captivating in this whole movie. Tobey Maguire gives a great performance as well as the young and naive Nick Carraway, Gatsby's neighbor. Great performances from Joel Edgerton (who, in my opinion, should get awards consideration for this film as Tom Buchanan) and the always solid, though never memorable, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan help make this movie one of the best full cast performances I have seen since The Social Network.
All that being said, this is a slow film. We do not even see Gatsby until half an hour in and while billed at 2 hours, 23 minutes, I did feel like it was much longer. However slow, it was captivating from start to finish. Overall this was a great film, but not one I would recommend to those looking for mindless entertainment. I give it an A.
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