*Insert obligatory paragraph about how my exams are over and I can start posting again*.
So over the last month and a half, I’ve done quite a lot of stuff, but nothing particularly blog-worthy so I’m just going to pretend the most stressful period of my life never happened. How convenient.
Yesterday, however, I went to watch the Great Gatsby.
Some of you may not know this, but for the last two years, I’ve been studying the book in English, amongst other pieces. Those of you who have read the book will know that symbolism and hidden messages aside, the book itself is a pretty heavy book. It’s one of the few books where I actually have had to reread paragraphs simply because they were so densely written. So you can imagine that being forced to read large swathes of it at a stretch in English probably wasn’t the most entertaining use of time, and even my English teacher (who, by the way, is quite possible the single greatest individual on the planet) couldn’t make the long-winded descriptions remotely tolerable. But I persevered through the book, with the notion that it was boring growing more and more entrenched every page.
So one fine day, I found myself sitting in a literature exam, analysing a description of a particular character. Having finished this arduous essay, I sat back, and decided to read the piece again. As I did so, I realised something rather strange. It was actually written pretty damn well. It seemed that having finished ever needing to read the book again, my mind immediately gave me the metaphorical finger and decided that I wanted to read it again. Unbeknownst to me, it seems that in a fit of teenage angst, I only wanted to read the Great Gatsby when I wasn’t required to do so. Needless to say, I succumbed to this yearning and read the book again.
Unfortunately, it was as dense as before, but this time, I found myself appreciating the vivid descriptions, the underlying metaphors behind the characters and just how alien a time it seemed. I realised that it wasn’t really a story about a boring narrator who recounts an even more boring story, but that actually, the characters didn’t exist at all. But I’ll talk about that later.
Moving onto the movie. The Great Gatsby stars Leonardo Dicaprio as the titular character, Tobey Maguire as Nick, Carey Mulligan as Daisy and Joel Edgerton as Tom. It’s directed by Baz Luhrmann. It’s a slightly confusing movie to watch, because as a movie, it’s a really good movie! I enjoyed every minute of the movie because it’s just so vibrant, chaotic and colorful. Some of the scenes in which there is an awkward atmosphere are done brilliantly, and the chemistry between the characters is in general pretty good.
As a reflection of its source material, however, I don’t think the movie did as well. The main problem is simply that The Great Gatsby is a ridiculously uncinematic (that’s a word now) book. There are countless scenes which contribute very little to the plot of the book yet play a large part in the messages of the book. Scenes like, for example, Nick meeting Daisy’s daughter and how Daisy behaves. Scenes like that just weren’t included in the movie and the unfortunate thing is that they just weren’t necessary. There are also these critical lines in the book like Daisy’s comment on girls which are included in the movie, but again, I get the feeling that the film is basically screaming “Look! This line is important!” to the audience. There’s a closeup on the actors face, a dramatic pause in the music and a moment of sober reflection after the line is complete; whereas in the book, most of those lines are just uttered offhand. Again, it’s difficult to get the same impact in the movie without this change, but it just makes it seem as though the movie is trying a little too hard to get the message across.
Nick’s a rather interesting character in the book. He serves the part of a narrator, but has no bias and in fact, goes to great lengths in the first chapter to explain this. He basically tells events as they are and if you think about it in terms of the story, he seems pretty unnecessary. There were plenty of other ways to get Gatsby and Daisy to meet. So ultimately, he’s not really needed in the movie because you can’t see things from his point of view. It’s not possible for him just to be cut out of the movie, so in order to include him in the movie, an interesting backstory is made up about how he’s recounting the story to his therapist at a sanitorium because he’s become a depressed alcoholic as a result of the events in the book and during the events of the book, Nick just wanders around looking stoned. The therapist recommends that Nick writes in his journal, which allows for convenient montages of Nick typing feverishly into his typewriter and giving long monologues which are almost verbatim what is written in the book. That amount of narration gets kind of overwhelming, but to the director’s credit, there isn’t really any other way to incorporate it. What wasn’t as elegant, though, was the last few lines of the book and how they were translated into the movies. The lines themselves are lovely, incorporating the human condition into a metaphor about boats, and the director recognises this. Unfortunately, he chooses to broadcast this importance by actually typing up the lines on the screen as Nick types them in his typewriter. It was just so overtly done that it made me cringe.
The Great Gatsby has a lot going for it. It’s a beautiful looking film, the soundtrack is brilliant, and I’ve never seen such crazy parties. There’s this scene in the book at Gatsby’s funeral, where his Dad comes and talks about Gatsby and just generally makes him look good. It doesn’t contribute much to the story, and so it’s removed from the movie. And in a sense, the whole movie is a bit like that. It’s almost complete and has everything that’s necessary to be adequate, but it lacks that final element which makes it amazing.
So in conclusion, this is a Gatsby that’s fun, entertaining and sounds great. It’s a good Gatsby. But as its title suggests, it should be great. And it doesn’t quite get there.
Abzonnian Ramblings 