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View Full Version : The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann)



eternity
05-07-2013, 06:16 AM
imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343092/)

http://2a56b976980e0793ddee-5cc5435fcbc367bb03f9a415e7067a 97.r91.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/the-great-gatsby-20131-e1350321293835.jpeg

eternity
05-07-2013, 06:16 AM
Bad news: The Great Gatsby isn't terribly good.
Worse news: The Great Gatsby isn't terrible.

An absolutely tonedeaf adaptation. You've never seen bombast this banal. I could live if Luhrmann's "contributions" to the material were at least interesting, ironically or otherwise. Tobey Maguire needs to be stopped.

baby doll
05-07-2013, 11:49 AM
Who do you guys think would've been an acceptable director for this movie? (I vote for Guy Maddin.)

Ezee E
05-07-2013, 09:59 PM
Who do you guys think would've been an acceptable director for this movie? (I vote for Guy Maddin.)

Matthew Weiner.
Todd Haynes.

Spinal
05-07-2013, 10:22 PM
Joe Wright

Winston*
05-07-2013, 10:29 PM
Kenneth Lonergan

number8
05-07-2013, 11:38 PM
Christopher Nolan.

EyesWideOpen
05-08-2013, 12:00 AM
I'm more interested in Luhrmann's Gatsby then any other director named so far.

Gamblor
05-08-2013, 01:14 AM
Joe Swanberg

Sycophant
05-08-2013, 01:38 AM
Stephen Chow.

transmogrifier
05-08-2013, 01:57 AM
Tyler Perry

EyesWideOpen
05-08-2013, 02:19 AM
I would watch a Tyler Perry - Stephen Chow co-directed Gatsby.

Boner M
05-08-2013, 02:34 AM
James Gray.

Watashi
05-08-2013, 02:43 AM
Tim Burton.

It writes itself.

Russ
05-08-2013, 02:47 AM
LvT

EyesWideOpen
05-08-2013, 03:21 AM
Jon Favreau

Derek
05-08-2013, 03:46 AM
Werner Herzog

Ivan Drago
05-08-2013, 03:53 AM
Gaspar Noe.

Winston*
05-08-2013, 03:59 AM
A Cactus

Pop Trash
05-08-2013, 04:07 AM
A green light at the end of a dock.

Irish
05-08-2013, 04:12 AM
Wong Kar Wai?

Or, really: No one.

The book doesn't lend itself to adaptation. All of its power is in Fitzgerald's economy of style and the beauty of his prose. The plot, such as it is, barely passes muster as a 1930s drugstore potboiler.

Audiences didn't go for this in the 70s when they tried it with Redford and Farrow. Why would they go for it today? Especially after being weened on Batman and Harry Potter?

Skitch
05-10-2013, 09:00 AM
Kim Ki-Duk

wigwam
05-10-2013, 02:39 PM
:|

Boner M
05-10-2013, 06:27 PM
like a two hour riff on the flower shop scene from The Room ("Ididntseeyouthr""hidoggie").
Sold!

wigwam
05-10-2013, 06:59 PM
just rent the Redford version or Moulin Rouge and put your DVD player on 2x

dreamdead
05-11-2013, 03:25 PM
A film that suffers precisely because of its early excess. Luhrmann's attempt to stylize this and remove it from the threat of perfunctory adaptation drags things to a screeching halt. The first forty minutes or so (everything before Gatsby's first real appearance) are an unseemly menagerie of tracking shots into cgi landscapes or cutaways to extras blanketed by the contemporary music cues or visualizing the words being formed by Nick. After the machinations of Gatsby's attempts to win back Daisy come to the fore, Luhrmann seems less interested in exploring the idiocy described above, and the film starts to settle down and engage its ideas. That said, such abandonment of the excessively Luhrmann tropes in the second half make me wonder why he held to them so steadfastly in the first third of the film. That first act submarines the tone of what comes after and adds so little.

DiCaprio is magnetic here, as is Edgerton--I think I caught snippets of some John Adams music, too, which was fun. Nonetheless, the insistence on hammering home the Eckelburg sign and the complete refusal to show Daisy's child until the coda suggests first an attempt to overly thematize and, second, to simplify Daisy's complexity as a wife and mother until she's made her choice and then damns her for remaining tied down.

I wish Luhrmann had excised the second and beginning of the third act and re-shot the rest of the film to approximate that tone. It's clearly where his interest lies, and the film breathes and flourishes in those moments. Sadly, the rest is anchored to Luhrmann's ornate perfunctory style. The mildest of recommendations purely for the middle section, which does work.

Fezzik
05-13-2013, 01:25 PM
I'll be honest. The only reason I want to see this is to see DiCaprio's performance.

Everything I've read makes me think I'll be bored stiff.

Henry Gale
05-15-2013, 06:06 AM
Oh wow, I kind of expected to come here having to defend being the only "yay", since last I checked there were none, but yeah, I liked this more than I expected to, maybe because it was pretty nicely synced-up and even elevated version of what I'd pictured once I heard most of the soundtrack, but also because for everything that didn't work for me, there were plenty of things that did.

There are definitely some dud-ridden stretches, but both those and the bits that really struck a chord with me are both a direct result of Luhrmann playing it anything but safe. A large percentage of what I ended up being enthralled by were the most ethereal, visually windy, light-on-dialogue sequences, and that's the sort of stuff I think Baz does best. But sadly, he's also accepted the job of adapting a seminal American literary classic, so those more defined, structured bits have to function close to how they originally did on the page (just maybe with an awkward off-beat touch or two planted in the centre of them to keep things off-kilter). There's not necessarily much wrong with the scenes of the characters in small rooms just talking, but they just seem to lack the zest or reinventing upheaval of, say, his Romeo & Juliet adaptation, and they feel more dryly compulsory than they should.

That might sound like I think Luhrmann should just be a music video director or something, but I don't. I think he's an extremely cinematic director with a tilt to his visuals that maybe aren't unmatched, but are certainly singular. The 3D he employs with so much of his imagery -- just as when the likes of other confident stylists like Scorsese, Ang Lee, or any number of animation directors have taken the reins of the technology -- completely envelop the richen the big screen in ways never quite etched before. If there's one thing the movie absolutely gets right, it's its stylistic excess and how it utilizes it.

So even though I am as similarly mixed on it as its overall, scattered reception, I still find myself after viewing it being more consumed and leaning the way of its positives than its clunkier bits. I'm not sure I ever want to see Tobey Maguire do the Charleston to Watch the Throne's "Who Gon Stop Me" ever again, but I'd gladly go for seconds on any number of other scenes, similarly immersed in visual ballsiness and brash musicality.

***

Sxottlan
05-15-2013, 08:59 AM
I rather enjoyed this. There's a sadness to the whole thing and early on I liked how it's contrasted with this high energy of a typical Luhrmann production. I liked the anachronistic use of music for the first time in one of his films. I don't think I would have hated that in Moulin Rouge if he'd let the damn songs breathe in that movie.

And there are nice quiet moments. I especially liked when Gatsby's house is lit up, but everything is quiet. I liked how pathetic Gatsby was in many ways. The self-delusion reminded me of the best of Satoshi Kon's work.

All that said, the pacing slows down more and more as though suddenly Luhrmann forgot that sadness has to mean low energy. The hotel room scene just goes on forever. Literally. It's still going on.

Watashi
05-25-2013, 05:20 AM
It's hard to separate book from film when watching an adaptation, but this is The Great Fucking Gatsby.

Loved Gatsby's entrance. Best part of the movie.

As much as I love Elizabeth Debicki, Luhrmann completely slashed Jordan Baker's role to be pretty eye candy. Her entire romance with Nick is not mentioned at all. Why have her there then?

It also seems that Luhrmann thought the metaphors of the green light and Dr. TJ Eckleberg were so neat, because he had to shove its symbolism in our face over and over.

It's faithful to the plot, but so what? It's not that hard to retell the story beat by beat. The only time the film had a pulse is when Luhrmann was doing his usual pomps and circumstance for the the first party.

Fezzik
05-26-2013, 03:17 AM
A great big ball of MEH.

It's beautiful to look at, but the framing device took away all the impact of Nick's disillusionist and as much as I understand wanting to preserve FSF's language, the constant insistence of actually placing the words on screen just got old after a while.

Its a beautiful film to look at, and Leo and Joel Edgerton alone make me give this a yay, but it was CLOSE.

Skitch
05-27-2013, 11:43 AM
http://i.imgur.com/pz910JK.jpg

:eek:

Fezzik
05-29-2013, 04:25 PM
http://i.imgur.com/pz910JK.jpg

:eek:

While I've read this multiple times and find it amusing...Jack didn't have the Heart of the Ocean at the end. Rose did. So this cute attempt at tying in plots doesn't quite fly. :/

Kurosawa Fan
05-29-2013, 04:57 PM
While I've read this multiple times and find it amusing...Jack didn't have the Heart of the Ocean at the end. Rose did. So this cute attempt at tying in plots doesn't quite fly. :/

Uh, he also doesn't survive. It's rewriting the end of Titanic to make Leo abandon Rose, steal the Heart of the Ocean, and live the lush life in America.

Fezzik
05-29-2013, 05:08 PM
Uh, he also doesn't survive. It's rewriting the end of Titanic to make Leo abandon Rose, steal the Heart of the Ocean, and live the lush life in America.

I know, but there's been re-writings where he didnt actually die..he "floated away" and woke up on the beach in Inception, for instance. I thought this rewrite was doing the same. He survived (faked his death or what not). I guess I was reading too much into it

number8
06-12-2013, 02:53 AM
This is my least favorite Baz Luhrmann movie. He showed too much restraint here. Should've pushed the aesthetic even more, add more Jay-Z in there. Or more of those Sam Raimi-ish dolly shots of Tobey Maguire making goofy faces. I liked those. As it is, the movie is just mostly a silly bore. The best bits are when it's intentionally being silly, like the reunion scene.

DiCaprio is terrible in this. Carey Mulligan is great, but she's playing such an impenetrably unappealing waif. Edgerton's awesome, at least.

The worst misstep is using Fitzgerald's narration verbatim to describe the characters' emotions, because it just makes the actors' efforts pale in comparison. Like when Carraway first meets Gatsby, his voiceover is telling us that it's "one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it." That is describing the best goddamn smile anyone can ever smile, and we expect to see that. Instead we get this smug piece of shit smile:

http://www.afrobella.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/leonardo-dicaprio-gatsby.png

That's not a "understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself" smile. That's a "look at my fireworks, bitch, we go crunk" smile.

number8
06-12-2013, 03:24 AM
As much as I love Elizabeth Debicki, Luhrmann completely slashed Jordan Baker's role to be pretty eye candy. Her entire romance with Nick is not mentioned at all. Why have her there then?

I find this interesting, because I felt that Luhrmann was trying to suggest that Carraway was actually in love with Gatsby, what with the histrionic outburst at the funeral, and the addition of him literally going insane and becoming "morbidly alcoholic" due to Gatsby's death.

Ezee E
09-21-2013, 11:30 PM
Mixed bag for me. It's like it isn't sure if it wants to by majority style or majority substance, and comes up failing on both sides. I've never particularly been a fan of the book for the same reasons though. Nobody really comes off as that interesting to me, especially Daisy.

When Luhrmann is doing Luhrmann it's at its best.

eternity
09-22-2013, 05:27 AM
I find this interesting, because I felt that Luhrmann was trying to suggest that Carraway was actually in love with Gatsby, what with the histrionic outburst at the funeral, and the addition of him literally going insane and becoming "morbidly alcoholic" due to Gatsby's death.

Then why not go all the way? I agree that the implication is there, but it's even more evident in the book where he does date Jordan. http://www.salon.com/2013/01/09/was_nick_carraway_gay/

Grouchy
12-02-2013, 01:37 AM
This was rubbish. Lhurmann's main contribution to the novel is putting in shitty modern music.

Also, Rowland, check out the Orange and Fucking Teal! It's everywhere!