The Great Gatsby
2013
**
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, Jack Thompson, Amitabh Bachchan
In 1922, narrator Nick Carraway rents a house on Long Island next door to an enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. Gatsby hosts famously pompous parties in a bid to impress Daisy Buchanan, his former lover and Nick's cousin, who is now married to wealth. This is the fourth big screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel about the underbelly of the American Dream. Jack Clayton's 1974 version was respectful but dull. For his vision of the book, Baz Luhrmann adopts the same razzle-dazzle style he made famous in Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge. Swooping camera moves - check, lavish sets and costumes - check, operatically orchestrated group scenes - check, heavy use of digital effects - check, an anachronistic soundtrack - check. Although Luhrmann's stylistic palette has become very predictable, the visual fireworks usually don't allow his films to get boring. However, he cannot get under the skin of these people any more than Clayton, and the pleasures of this romantic spectacle are mostly aesthetic (the production design and costumes won Academy Awards). The performances are fine, but the characters are so narrowly defined that their plight rarely engaged me.
