“It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Baz
Luhrnman’s The Great Gatsby is an
audacious, fascinating technological
and aesthetic experiment in expressionism, a “kaleidoscopic carnival,” to
borrow Fitzgerald’s phrase, as bursting with bejeweled excess as its title
character’s boozy parties, the cinematic equivalent of the biggest, craziest,
loudest guest at a gathering where the confetti falls and the champagne flows
like monsoon rain, and the twenties really roar their golden roar. Everything
shines in baroque, brilliant, beautiful fakeness.
A
lavish, splashy celebration of the extravagance of the Jazz Age, Gatsby is filled to the brim with the
sort of stylistic gambits Luhrman fans have come to expect—epic, classic
melodrama that blends old world theatrics with the newest in postmodernist
subjective filmmaking, CGI cityscapes, anachronistic soundtrack mashups of period
music and modern pop, psychological drama and speedy slapstick. But through the
brightly-hued haze of acrobatic camera movements, opulent flowers, flappers,
fringes, and frills, Luhrman’s reverence for his source material shines through
like the blinking green beacon of light at the end of Daisy’s peer.
