18 May 2013

The Great Gatsby

At the moment, I'm reading another of F Scott Fitzgerald's books - in fact his first, This Side of Paradise. (It's rather dragging I'm afraid - well written, just not too engaging - but that's another story entirely) Undoubtedly the most famous of the things he wrote was The Great Gatsby - a novel which has just come out as a Hollywood blockbuster movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, directed by showman extraordinaire Baz Luhrmann.


A few months ago I read the book itself. It had been on my reading list for a while, given its popularity - but I went into it knowing very little, especially about the plot. So I didn't quite know what to expect - it wasn't as if I'd read any other of Fitzgerald's work, or was familiar with his distinctive, effortlessly poetic writing style. (I haven't seen any other film adaptations either!) But I did enjoy it.

I was caught up in the characters, the plot, the words, the atmosphere. In my mind, though the prose was pleasant (and the cynic in me thought it was almost written to be analysed for countless GCSE literature courses), the atmosphere seemed pretty harsh and brutal. This was a shady world of corruption and capitalism and, in the end, murder and death. Strangely enough I hadn't got the full impact of it - it's a book trying to define its time, but read ninety years later, you take the motor cars and the alcoholic parties for granted. When in actual fact this was the era of Prohibition (hey - I'm not American, perhaps that's why some of it was lost on me). But I could see why it was successful, even if I didn't quite get everything on my first (and only, thus far) reading.

But then you read that it wasn't initially successful at all. When it was first published in 1926, though the author had realised he was creating a novel's novel, a fine piece of literature which would, in part, define and also transcend its decade... it received mixed reviews. It didn't sell very well. People, apparently, didn't quite get it. So bear that in mind when reading the book - or indeed, seeing the new film that's just been released (you know, that one that's been getting mixed reviews...).

So what about the film?

The first thing that strikes you is the visuals - it's a blockbuster in every sense of the word, and it looks absolutely lavish. The parties are wild, and brilliantly staged. There's great sweeping shots from one bay to the next, and cars whizzing by over huge landscapes - created, of course, by the latest computer effects. In fact, for me watching it in 2D, there's a bit too much of it, and at times it's almost too well done. Almost all the exteriors of the film are done in greenscreen, which gives it an odd look to my somewhat trained eyes, almost like a comic-book. Given that it isn't, and the subject matter isn't sci-fi or fantasy, it's jarring. Whether or not it looks better in 3D (even if you have to wear the glasses and focus a lot), I don't know.


Where the film shined the most for me, apart from it being gorgeous to look at, was the actors. The quieter moments, where the characters are sitting in a room and talking. And they are good characters, and very good actors - after all, one of the reasons the book is adapted is because of the plot and the characters. Even though at first it doesn't really feel like they're centre stage, amongst all the visual trappings. And the music too - it's a great soundtrack, the dazzling jewel in the film being Lana Del Rey's sumptuous Young and Beautiful, and there's also Florence + the Machine's amazing, directly-inspired Only the Love. Sure, it's odd seeing people in the 1920s dancing along to modern club music, to rap, and a jazzy rendition of Beyonce's Crazy in Love. But, it's of its time, and it works. Coupled with the CGI, the 3D, and the glitz and glamour, this film will date very very fast - ironic, given the source material. But hey - Hollywood does this sorts of blockbusters every year, so why not, in Gatsby's spirit, give people a huge showstopper to remember?

It's definitely a tough book to film. Being somebody else's adaptation of the novel, it's always going to be somebody else's view of what they think the novel is saying. It's one of those books where you often have to read into the poetry or things that are happening just out of the main picture - subtlety, in other words. That's kind of hard to capture - the film uses voiceover, but then that ruins the scenes where the characters are properly interacting.
Watching it on screen, with the film following the plot of the novel faithfully (overly so, perhaps), some scenes I thought were spoilt by showing it in detail, and would be better left to our imaginations - I didn't imagine Gatsby's love affair was quite so passionate when I read it, for instance. And then, some scenes I thought worked really well, where the film deliberately showed us its themes, and what the story was all about. And then spelt it out in voiceover. And underlined with a red pen, twice.

The book, I believe, has reached high acclaim, right up there as one of the best American novels. Similarly, the film absolutely adores the book. Take the last chapter, the last paragraph: reading it fresh, I thought it was an enigmatic, poetic, if downbeat end to the whole story, but I didn't realise that it was especially famous. The ending of the movie tries to capture the essence of those words on the page... well, it tries too hard. I'd have been happy with just a voiceover to be honest. When the film starts to quote parts of the book, literally writing the words up on the screen, you realise this is a very unusual adaptation. Whether it's a good thing or not is up to the viewer.