Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!) adapts F. Scott Fitzgerald’s romantic masterpiece set in New York in the spring of 1922 - an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz and bootleg kings. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher and Joel Edgerton. Winner of the 2014 Academy Awards for Best Costume and Production Design.
Would-be writer Nick Carraway (Maguire) leaves the Midwest for New York, chasing his own American Dream. He lands next door to mysterious, party-giving millionaire Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio), and across the bay from his cousin Daisy (Mulligan) and her philandering, blue-blooded husband Tom (Edgerton). Nick is drawn into the captivating world of the super-rich and, from within, pens a tale of love, ambition and tragedy.
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Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!) adapts F. Scott Fitzgerald’s romantic masterpiece set in New York in the spring of 1922 - an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz and bootleg kings. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Isla Fisher and Joel Edgerton.
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What Luhrmann grasps even less than previous adapters of the tale is that Fitzgerald was, via his surrogate Carraway, offering an eyewitness account of the decline of the American empire, not an invitation to the ball.
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Like Gatsby himself, the movie's a handsome attraction whose dizzying/vulgar wealth is unashamedly flaunted to court favour with bright young things.
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The anachronistic pop-music cues, digitally augmented tracking shots and disco-globe-glittery production design don't re-create the headiness of early-20th-century New York so much as invent a billowy fantasy otherworld in the gauzy vein of Twilight.
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Less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence.
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An energetic, glittering adaptation of the classic Fitzgerald novel, but sacrifices all of the original's subtlely in the process.
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The cast is first-rate, the ambiance and story provide a measure of intoxication and, most importantly, the core thematic concerns pertaining to the American dream, self-reinvention and love lost, regained and lost again are tenaciously addressed.
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Despite DiCaprio's prize performance, purists will fume, but even as lit-crashing razzle-dazzle entertainment Luhrmann's adaptation is a candelabrum too far.
Full reviewThe Great Gatsby is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV and Neon Rentals.
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