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Probably one of the most disappointing films ever


I really feel like Baz Luhrmann missed the mark with this film. I wrote a piece about the issues that came up with his directing, check it out here: https://adityamrao.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/cinema-of-excess-the-great-gatsby/

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Sorry you feel that way. given how much you love The Great Gatsby.

Because of how much I adore the story, I was incredibly nervous when I heard that Baz Luhrmann was going to be directing the movie adaptation.


As was I, although I loved his Strictly Ballroom and have seen it any number of times, I could only take 15 minutes of Moulin Rouge. Ugh, horrible.

Luhrman is an over the top kind of guy, and I couldn't fathom how he could do any kind of justice to Fitzgerald's generally quiet and introspective novel. Luhrman and Fitzgerald are in most ways polar opposites in their artistic expressions and approaches. (Your comparison with Fitzgerald's passage describing the party is a great example) So how could this possibly work? And yet, for me, it did, much to my surprise.

Part of it may be because my expectations were low, but I ended up loving Luhrman's Great Gatsby and have now watched it probably three times, maybe four.

Yes, it was loud and in your face. The tone and pace were completely different from Fitzgerald's, or than the 1970s version, which did try to capture the spirit of Fitzgerald; this did not, nor did it attempt to. A weird, yet to me successful, amalgam of the 1920s and the 2010s.

The party scene, and really all of it, was a modern retelling that happened to be set in the 20s, with excessive excess. The music, the surreal visuals and almost psychedelic scenes. The optometrist's sign, the desolation of that area of town, the exaggerated weirdness of the party in the NY apartment with Myrtle, Tom, Gatsby, and the other people.

And yet, for me it retained enough of the heart of Fitzgerald's novella that I don't think he'd have entirely disapproved; he might even have liked it.

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