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Health & Fitness

Movie Review - The Great Gatsby

Movie Review - The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby **½ (PG-13) This latest screen version of the classic novel is a mixed bag of assets and flaws. Director and co-writer Baz Lurhrmann ambitiously tries for a 3-D spectacle with several lavish party scenes that Busby Berkeley would have envied. He inserts bits of  anachronistically modern music into this 1922 setting. That worked beautifully in his Moulin Rouge, and hilariously in the opening joust of A Knight’s Tale, but feels overly coy and somewhat forced in this context.  

Most of the glitz one sees in the trailers comes in the first half of this 143-minute extravaganza, with the rest more somberly following F. Scott Fitzgerald’s sad tale of love and loss, as told by a rather nerdy observer and participant, Nick Caraway (Tobey Maguire). He’s the poor cousin of Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), and neighbor of the enigmatic Mr. Gatsby (Leo DiCaprio), relating the seminal events of that summer in a wraparound. Nick may be American literature’s earliest, albeit reluctant, wingman, alternately abetting both males in the romantic triangle - Gatsby and Daisy’s loutish husband, Tom.

On the plus side, major themes of abuses by the rich and powerful, obsession with gaining and flaunting wealth, and short-sightedness in the pursuit of fun and profit are solidly developed. The boom of that era is not unlike that of recent vintage - especially in the ill-fated, nearly religious zeal over Wall Street as the easy path to riches beyond what anyone could earn from his labors. Buchanan embodies today’s One Percenters in many respects, none of which are flattering.

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DiCaprio plays Gatsby with an odd stiffness, especially compared to Robert Redford and others who have assumed that role, from Warner Baxter (before talkies), to Alan Ladd, Robert Ryan and more. Mulligan’s Daisy is too ephemeral to give resonance to anyone’s feelings about her, which undermines the emotional core around which the rest revolves. Arguably, she never was intended to be a relatable character, as opposed to a lovely canvas upon which adoring men would project their idealized versions of her, enamored of the fantasy, without knowing her reality. But that dichotomy is harder to craft on a big screen than the printed page.  The film has many moments and elements to admire, but Luhrmann’s excesses ultimately sink the ship. (5/10/13)

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