The great Gatsby

CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joey Edgerton, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki DIRECTOR, PRODUCER: Baz Luhrmann SCREENPLAY: Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce MUSIC: Craig Armstrong CINEMATOGRAPHY: Simon Duggan EDITING: Matt Villa GENRE: Drama  DISTRIBUTOR:  Warner Bros.  RUNNING TIME:  143 minutes LOCATION: United States

Australia

Technical assessment:  3.5

Moral assessment:  2

MTRCB rating:  PG 13

CINEMA rating:  V 18

The Great Gatsby (2013) is the fourth translation since 1926 or the classic 1925 tale by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The story is narrated by Nick Carraway (Toby Macguire), a mid-western scion who moves to New York and rents a cottage on Long Island for weekend getaways.  Next door is an opulent mansion owned and lived in by Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a scandalously wealthy man with a shadowy past and a questionable present.  Nick has a cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), Gatsby’s old flame and ongoing obsession, who is already married to a heel of a millionaire, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), with whom she lives in another palatial home just across the bay.  At Gatsby’s request, Nick arranges a meeting between the former lovers, hardly suspecting that it would to a tragic reunion.

Without being compared to the earlier film versions, or being judged according to the printed novel, The Great Gatsby is eye candy, giving the viewer a walk-through of era of jazz and a vicarious thrill from attending those lavish and decadent parties of the rich.  The production set does justice to that age, and so do the costumes, music, etc.  DiCaprio, however, tends to come on too strong as DiCaprio—it is hard to imagine a man named Jay Gatsby when it is played by an actor whose face has grown too familiar from the many other memorable characters he has played.  He has the intensity though, matched by Edgerton’s, especially in the confrontation scene over a fickle woman.  Edgerton superbly plays the husband who—in spite of his having an affair with the wife of a pathetic gas station manager—would not let go his obviously cheating wife not because he truly loves her but because he wants it known that he owns her.  

In The Great Gatsby we have a character who must have inspired the coining of the phrase “filthy rich”.  He throws parties he doesn’t even care to attend, and his guest list suggests he is not above buying powerful men.  Since we have not had the privilege of reading the book, we cannot say if it is the celebrated author’s idea (or director Baz Luhrmann’s) to glamorize this character (why call him “great”?) and justify his profligate ways.  So what is the story trying to tell us?  That the poor can be as greedy as the rich?  That only the old rich have a right to be rich, and that new money is immoral? That a man’s extravagance is justified because he was hungry as a child?  That it is all right to betray the trusting and the ignorant?  That a lie can make a man get away with murder?  That having a cad of a husband is enough reason for a wife and her lover to ignore the 6^th Commandment?  That a husband’s love may cover up a wife’s crime?  Do the victims in the story deserve their fate?  Such are the issues adult viewers may thresh over popcorn and soda.