The Great Gatsby (2013 film)

Have to agree. I mean, it was gorgeous to look at and I really loved the score and the soundtrack, but the acting was lacking. Plus I felt as if the film was way more sympathetic to the Buchannons than it had ought to be.

I heard Di Caprio did a great Gatsby.

He just looked crazed most of the time. Not that this isn't part of the character, but I found it hard to sympathize with him. The fact that they dropped the stuff with his father added to that.

This is how underwhelming and empty the movie was; when it finally ended and the words "Directed by Baz Luhrmann" popped onscreen, my first thought was "Really? Oh, yeah." There was so much nothing going on that I really had completely forgotten. I can remember one thing that I kind of enjoyed, which is that the speakeasy is called The Angry Diamond. That's a line from (a totally different part of) the book, and I felt happy to have picked up on it. Other than that...

edited 27th May '13 11:31:13 PM by Mort08

Welp, I saw it. And it sucked.

This movie is most decidedly a Baz Lurhmann film. In that it is very pretty, but also shallow and utterly soulless. Having a director like Lurhmann direct a film adaptation of a work so steeped in symbolism and imagery was a colossal mistake. This flick suffers from the same problem as Star Trek Into Darkness, in that they both take parts from their respective source materials and incorporate them wholesale without making the slightest attempt to actually understand the source material.

Also, Lurhmann: TOO SUBTLE.

Besides soulless and unsubtle, the film is also hideously incoherent and tone-deaf. It felt like Lurhmann couldn't decide if he wanted a period piece or modern reimagining, and this indecision fucked up the tone of the movie big time. New York is certainly 1920s New York, but then you have things like hip hop blasting out of the car filled to the brim with dancing young black women, or legit Vegas Strip-style showgirls, and other shit that wouldn't look out of place in Moulin Rouge (but of course). And then cue the third act, which was rushed and shoehorned in after the first two acts and roughly and abruptly shifts gears from what is essentially "epic romance" to the original book's theme of "these rich people are dicks". So while the ending is essentially a copy of what happened in the book, it still feels sudden and unearned.

And I HATE the framing device. While in these days, Middle America vs. the coasts is a very controversial political issue (cue idiot conservatives claiming that New York City isn't "real America"), a fucking HUGE theme in the original book was how the American Dream (as represented by the rich of New York in the middle of the roaring Twenties) was a crock of shit, and Nick Carraway forsakes this dream once he realizes it and leaves to return to the Midwest. But nope, not here!

I guess that I should comment on the one good thing I found about this movie (besides the casting, which was good to relatively inoffensive). This being the windows of New York scene at Tom and Myrtle's love shack in the front half of the movie.

And poor Jordan Baker!

Aw, come on, Nick wasn't there for the American Dream, he was there on a half-assed attempt to make some money for himself and attain financial independence from his wealthy family.

He didn't leave because he was disgusted with the American Dream (he was already upper-class, what was it there for him to dream?), he left because he was disappointed with a bunch of very specific assholes whom he had the misfortune of meeting and "befriending" (insofar as one can call those interactions friendship).

As for Gatsby, he could have achieved the American Dream (in the sense of going from poor to financially independent and comfortably wealthy, at least), if he hadn't been busy chasing another dream entirely; a dream girl. And dream girls (dream boys too, for that matter) are hardly a US speciality; dumbasses ruin their lives over them worldwide.

He could have been a very rich man, and, eventually, a respected member of society. As for being accepted by the old money, that's only an issue as long as you need them for something specific. Trying to be one of them for its own sake strikes me as stupidly falling for a glamour, that, again, is hardly unique to the US.

edited 28th May '13 9:21:44 AM by TheHandle

Eh, I still think of the two versions, Winter Dreams is the better one. Fitgerald wrote two stories: A short story named Winter Dreams, where the Gatsby-type later on meets his Daisy counterpart and finds that she's been weathered by time and turned into an honest housewife; then there's Gatsby.

In Winter Dreams, no one dies, "Gatsby" very easily could nab "Daisy", but decides he's made so much more of himself than he was that he leaves her behind.

Aha! So he enforced What a Senseless Waste of Human Life, huh? Why? Did Gatsby die by Newbery medal?

edited 28th May '13 12:27:29 PM by TheHandle

When I first read the book, Chapter 2 was what made me think "Okay, maybe Luhrmann can do something cool with this story." And I'll admit that it was one of the better scenes.

Depending on timing, it might have been the difference between a wife at home and a wife committed. He went downhill when she was put away.

To be perfectly clear, I was expecting something with this kind of mood:

And then tragic but beautiful failure. Not... what ended up happening. Honestly, if they were going to make the first two bits a romantic epic, they should have done it all the way through.

They only made it like that to make it palatable to a common audience

You mean to make it palatable to any audience who isn't explicitly seeking out bitterness and Grimdark of the worst sort; the banal kind. I can still taste the bile. Ugh.

Remember, this was written by a man who lost his "Daisy" to madness. There's a bit of leeway you have to give Fitzgerald.

Other sources suggest that she wrote most of it, especially the grim parts.

edited 28th May '13 3:34:55 PM by TheHandle

The key word being "suggest."

I think you're being a little too hard on this whole thing. If you hate its guts just because it wasn't upbeat and refuse to read other books like it, then you're going to miss out on a lot of good stories.

edited 28th May '13 3:43:09 PM by Mort08

I could buy that. Love or no love, Scott was not entirely kind to Zelda. IIRC, he'd nixed the publishing on a story she was writing, then while she was away, he wound up doing it behind her back.

Though it's been a couple years since I was in school, so it's entirely possible I'm misremembering. My senior seminar teacher was a big fan of Zelda and Scott, and one of my classmates was doing an essay on her. A long one. I learned lots of little stuff that's mostly rotted away.

Overall, though, I'm not interested in the part of Reality Subtext that's about the creators themselves. The era they lived in, yes. But letting their own perceptions warp the image of their environment beyond what's realistic strikes me as a tad overindulgent. Just a tad.

And, yeah, I'm not a believer in True Art Is Angsty. There can be beauty in suffering, that is certainly true; but it has to flow naturally. A forced horrible ending is as bad as a forced happy ending.

edited 28th May '13 3:44:48 PM by TheHandle

I would hardly call the ending forced at all. The story itself was coherent and presented an a powerful and interesting message which arguably holds true to this day. In fact, it's a message that has been aped by countless, much inferior works. The movie just completely ignored it.

Honestly if you dislike the book because of the Downer Ending and the message then, well, it just might not be for you.

Ah, look, the "it's not for you" response is sort of... I don't know, isn't there some "X Law" that "this work is not for you" is not a valid response to criticism?

Judging from what you've told us about your expectations for books, I think that in this case, it's a valid response.

So I'm in a Periphery Hatedom, like an adult screaming that Barney the Dinosaur is creepy and horrible? I'm dissatisfied because the work was never intended to satisfy the likes of me?

Okay, then. Who's the Target Audience? Because the book flopped when it came out; it only became popular as it was distributed for free and massively to soldiers during WWII (what a morale-lifter, eh?).

edited 28th May '13 4:26:46 PM by TheHandle

If it became massively popular at that point, I would say it's because a lot of soldiers during those days connected with it. Especially coming back home. They were heroes, but saw themselves falling to the wayside. That American Dream they were fighting to protect had abandoned them, just like the American Dream Gatsy pursued had rung hollow and false. He never did gain what he wanted, and neither did many of them.

What, wasn't getting rid of the Nazis, starting the fall of the Empires, and becoming the mightiest nation on Earth, while not suffering a single strike on their own soil, enough? Did they want a cookie to go with it, or what am I missing here?

Even if you win, war can seriously mess you up.

I don't see what that has to do with "I am disappointed with the American Dream, also rich people are jerks and I don't even want to be one." Almost sounds like Sour Grapes, really. A healthy attitude to have, if you ask me, but not entirely honest.