Gatsby: Fitzgerald vs Luhrmann
Say "I prefer the novel" is quite smart, and pretender. Say "the book is better" or "impossible to adapt" it isn't right in all the cases. There are sort of movies quite good and even better or at the same level that the original text.
One of it it's Romeo+Juliet Bar Luhrmann's. He combine the fidelity to Shakespeare words' with the crazy movements of the camera, the contemporary music and the video-games aesthetic. A version for the new audience with the same spirit than the original.
But that's not the case of The great Gatsby. Another big fail from the Aussie director of the excellent Moulin Rouge. After Australia, his intent to film a classic epic movie about his country as Gone with the wind, Luhrmann try to come back to his first succeed, but with a novel so narrative that eat him in every single moment.
His sense of the show fail completely on the Scott Fitzgerald adaptation. The life in ruins that the writer describe it's here a luxury world with amazing parties. Ok, with some secrets, but rich at least. The audience can't feel in the scenarios how the world of Gatsby is falling apart as his ambition and love. They just see an amazing mise-en-scène meanwhile a sad story is taking place in front of them.
In fact, the director needs and excuse to make clear how sad it's all the situation, because the images can't do it by itself or even worst, because the Luhrmann realizes that the novel it's more difficult to adapt that he thought. So it is, that he needs to ad one thing that novel doesn't explain and less the movie. As in the book, the film is narrated by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) but because he is in a mental institution tell him the story to a doctor. Why? We never know it.
The rap and R&B music don't help at all, the nice suits and dresses, the useless and unreasonable 3D neither, that makes the movie bigger but empty of emotion, and what it's worst incapable to make feel the audience any emotion. No mystery about Gatsby figure's, no a fascination about him as Nick feels, not crying for story, no nothing. Leonardo DiCaprio tries really hard to make it happen, a naive Carey Mulligan too, but his story is so weak in this powerful and antagonistic backgrounds with the story they live that the relation becomes nothing special.
Maybe it's the novel, maybe it's Fitzgerald fault to write an amazing short novel, maybe it's Luhrmann who makes a high effort putting huge image in an intimate story, maybe he can handle his own style for a book like this, maybe he must chose another way to tell us it.
That means that he is losing his creativity? I don't think so. Maybe he choose the bad book or a wrong style. He show us his talent who create new atmospheres, to sense more with the eyes, the ears, with his crazy visual and musical rythim. So he had potential, but we can't see it in this Gatsby.
Trailer:
One of it it's Romeo+Juliet Bar Luhrmann's. He combine the fidelity to Shakespeare words' with the crazy movements of the camera, the contemporary music and the video-games aesthetic. A version for the new audience with the same spirit than the original.But that's not the case of The great Gatsby. Another big fail from the Aussie director of the excellent Moulin Rouge. After Australia, his intent to film a classic epic movie about his country as Gone with the wind, Luhrmann try to come back to his first succeed, but with a novel so narrative that eat him in every single moment.
His sense of the show fail completely on the Scott Fitzgerald adaptation. The life in ruins that the writer describe it's here a luxury world with amazing parties. Ok, with some secrets, but rich at least. The audience can't feel in the scenarios how the world of Gatsby is falling apart as his ambition and love. They just see an amazing mise-en-scène meanwhile a sad story is taking place in front of them.
In fact, the director needs and excuse to make clear how sad it's all the situation, because the images can't do it by itself or even worst, because the Luhrmann realizes that the novel it's more difficult to adapt that he thought. So it is, that he needs to ad one thing that novel doesn't explain and less the movie. As in the book, the film is narrated by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) but because he is in a mental institution tell him the story to a doctor. Why? We never know it.
The rap and R&B music don't help at all, the nice suits and dresses, the useless and unreasonable 3D neither, that makes the movie bigger but empty of emotion, and what it's worst incapable to make feel the audience any emotion. No mystery about Gatsby figure's, no a fascination about him as Nick feels, not crying for story, no nothing. Leonardo DiCaprio tries really hard to make it happen, a naive Carey Mulligan too, but his story is so weak in this powerful and antagonistic backgrounds with the story they live that the relation becomes nothing special.Maybe it's the novel, maybe it's Fitzgerald fault to write an amazing short novel, maybe it's Luhrmann who makes a high effort putting huge image in an intimate story, maybe he can handle his own style for a book like this, maybe he must chose another way to tell us it.
That means that he is losing his creativity? I don't think so. Maybe he choose the bad book or a wrong style. He show us his talent who create new atmospheres, to sense more with the eyes, the ears, with his crazy visual and musical rythim. So he had potential, but we can't see it in this Gatsby.
Trailer:
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