The Great Gatsby (Luhrmann, 2013)

When I first heard that they were making a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, I remember thinking three things: director Baz Luhrmann would create a beautiful Jazz Age setting, the casting was impeccable, and the film would sweep the 85th Academy Awards. I was right on one-and-a-half of these ideas.

Unfortunately, Warner Brothers Pictures decided to push the Christmas 2012 release of the film back to May 2013, making my third thought impossible. They believed that the film would do better financially in May, thereby also removing Gatsby from the Oscar competition. This made many people worried (myself included) about the quality of the picture, as their decision to delay it's release might have been because of the concern about the movie's likely critical reception.

It turns out they, like my initial thoughts, were only half right. 

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is a visually stunning drama, led by committed performances from the entire cast. Luhrmann's toned down version of his infamous eccentricity translates nicely in the motion picture. This proves to be both a positive and negative aspect of the film, as the viewers are subjected to what he believes the Jazz Age looked and felt like; however, we lose some of the realistic surroundings amidst the constant pomp and sparkle of Luhrmann's style.

For readers who are unfamiliar with Fitzgerald's literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a young bonds salesman who dreams of becoming a writer. He moves to New York City to experience the thrill and excitement of the city, and buys a run-down house on Long Island. He spends his days with his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), and their socialite friend Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki).

At nights,  Nick attends the almost daily parties of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). Gatsby is a mysterious figure, a charming millionaire who almost never shows his face in public. However, when Nick finally encounters Gatsby himself, the once-innocent writer becomes tossed into the world of dark secrets and love, the likes of which he is not prepared to handle.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays the title character convincingly, giving the haunted figure the vulnerability and almost fake high-class touch he needs. There's never a moment in this film where we know exactly what Gatsby is thinking, which remains necessary to the story's development. Tobey Maguire was born to play the third wheel character of Nick, excellent as a writer yet flawed as a friend and lover. Carey Mulligan plays a fair Daisy, but her version lacks the emotional depth of her literary equivalent. The only weak link in the near-perfect cast is Joel Edgerton, who is flat and uninteresting as the brutish Tom Buchanan. He should be the classic antagonist, but instead comes across as a random nuisance who pops up at the worst moments.

Many consider The Great Gatsby the greatest embodiment of the 1920's world, and Baz Luhrmann creates a visually appealing Roaring Twenties. His over-the-top party sequences are filmed nicely, and the costuming is good. But for some bizarre reason, Luhrmann decided to score the movie with rapper Jay Z. The music is distracting and hinders the illusion of the Jazz Age, drastically affecting the emotion of the story and ruining the escapist setting.

No movie adaptation of a novel is perfect, and I personally believe that a film should be judged on it's own merits and not by the source material it comes from. However, many viewers disagree, so I will briefly say that Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is probably the best adaptation of the book so far, but does obviously have it's flaws. It's most obvious drawback is the brief lapse of point-of-view. The story is narrated by Nick, yet the film shows several scenes in which Nick is absent. This is either lazy editing or creative cinematic license, so I have mixed feelings about what they did.

The Great Gatsby remains entertaining drama despite it's obvious editing problems. The beginning feels rushed, the middle is interesting, and the ending is clunky. Fans of the novel will probably be impressed, but those unfamiliar might find the film hard to understand. The movie assumes most people have read the book, so it speeds past a lot of important material in order to get the more visually interesting aspects on screen.

If viewers have read the classic novel, they should see the movie. If not, Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is nothing more than another decent Leonardo DiCaprio movie.

Three out of five stars.