There’s a line early on–I’m not sure if it’s also in the book–where Tom says to Nick something like, “I remember you like to watch. Don’t be ashamed!”
I think it’s possible to see the story as Nick’s attempt to stop watching and start participating, but he’s unable to find his way into the middle of the story; instead, it keeps happening around him, and he’s unable to become the main character of his own story.
I re read the novel on the weekend. I read it in my teens somewhere between 25 and 30 years ago… not for school, but out of curiosity because so many people my age had read it. It made very little impact on me at the time.
I love it now. After having had some examples of the different strata of society, what a happy relationship is, seeing abusive marriages, cheating marriages, hopeless pursuits of the unobtainable dreams, and all sorts of life experience I get it. Or at least I get it more than I did at 16 or 17, whenever I read it.
It isn’t a love story, it is a story of obsession and possession. Everyone is obsessed with obtaining something, wealth, power, position, a person, an ideal. What they want shows something about their class or character. What people are willing to trade to obtain their desire also reveals things about them.
I did find it interesting that the Nick/Jordan relationship was underplayed. He did refer her to as “frightening” in the book. Also her being a cheater at golf wasn’t explored in the movie. (Unless I missed it… I might have). I found it interesting that she was somewhat androgynous compared to Daisy. I think Nick may be gay but he may not even be out to himself. There are certainly enough examples though-out the book that one can analyze to make the case for it.
I loved the movie and the way it captured the over the top “roaring twenties” of mythology/social retrospect, and yet reminds us that every flapper, every dandy every person has real motivations and feelings. (If we think some motivations are wrong, that is okay too.)
I reread TGG every few years-it is a fascinating look back to the late 1920’s. The amazing thing is how closely the late '20s resembled the mid 2000’s-unbridled financial speculation, new technology, drug/alcohol use. The shallowness of the characters reflects the present day perfectly.
So the novel (even though almost 90 years old) is still relevant.
I talked to my mother (age 71) about this movie. We discussed how the 1920s to her were this glamourous age 20 years before she was born, followed by 20 years of pretty bleak times. Her mother was born in 1920 (but not to fabulously wealthy people in mansions, more like to struggling immigrants in logging camp tents) so the that time to her is equivilent to the early 50’s for me… past, but an imaginable past, most adults you knew as children lived through that time.
I realized that The Great Gatsby era for my son would be like Anne of Green Gables for me …80 years before I was born, and pretty remote. Of course my son kind of gets weirded out when I talk about cartoons being only a Saturday morning thing, not on the tv all the time.
I saw the movie last night. I thought it was a very well-made movie. I enjoyed the photography and the acting. I haven’t read the book in over 30 years, but I didn’t really care for the story that the movie was telling any more that I did with the book. I may not be giving Fitzgerald enough credit, though. It’s an empty story about empty people, so perhaps there is a certain meta quality to it.
I saw the film earlier today, after rereading the novel a few weeks ago. I absolutely loved the film, and I think it captured the book pretty well, although my opinion of the book isn’t entirely positive. It’s ultimately the story of a bunch of unlikeable, self-obsessed wealthy people, who project that obsession onto others to the point of destroying themselves and each other, and they do so in a beautiful and ultimately meaningless fashion.
The film was, as expected from Luhrmann, gorgeous, although significantly more restrained than I expected. As a film, it reminded me of Sunset Blvd as much as anything else, to the point of having a couple of shots that seemed to be taken from it. The voyeuristic aspects of it, and another scene, reminded me of Rear Window - for all the thousands of extras and vast spaces, it was still a claustrophobic film.
The casting and acting was superb. All the main performers brought a level of subtlety that made me, if not like these people, at least care what happened to them. DiCaprio, as always, owned every scene he was in, and Carey Mulligan was delightful to watch. Tobey Maguire was probably as good a Carraway as anyone could be, given that the character has no personality to speak of.
Probably my only criticism would be the length. It didn’t really need to be an hour longer than it takes to read the book, and whilst I wouldn’t say it dragged, it felt loose in places.
Overall, this was one of the films I’ve most been looking forward to this year, and I wasn’t disappointed. If you think the book contains vast secrets and multitudes, as some people seem to, you may not like it. If, like me, you seen the book as beautiful, shallow, and ultimately empty, this film captures it perfectly.
I thought the film was godawful. The first half was all ultra-quick cuts. If you have a 3-second attention span, I guess that might help. But to me it was annoying.
And the hip hop soundtrack? Infuriating. How can you make a movie about the Jazz Age and not feature, you know, jazz?
Luhrmann is an ass, and this movie is going to seem embarrassingly dated in just a few years.
The only positive bit from the movie was DiCaprio, who makes a good Gatsby. It’s a shame the performance was wasted on this tripe.
A thought occurred to me about DiCaprio as I was watching this movie. Gatsby is almost a continuation of his character Jack, if Jack had made it across the ocean.
…yeah but not a great one…
I made that joke to a friend as we walked out of the theater. “See? Jack didn’t die!” The time lines almost work perfectly between the two movies, too.
On the contrary, Nick loses everything.
Nick starts off believing in Gatsby. More significantly, he believes in what Gatsby represents: the triumph of the self-made man, the ordinary guy who through sheer gumption and guts makes it big. Over the course of the events in the story, Nick loses not only his believe in Gatsby as a great man, but his belief in the American Dream as being an achievable thing, or even a thing that’s worth trying to achieve in the first place.
Nick is the only character in the book who changes at all. Gatsby dies, but he never changes; he goes to his death as he lived his life, blind and chasing illusions. Tom and Daisy remain what they have always been: self-centered, uncaring, thoughtless, and careless. Nick, though, goes from being naive and ambitious himself to thoroughly disillusioned and cynical by the end of the story.
What represents the worse loss: striving and failing, or coming to believe that striving at all is pointless? I’d argue the latter, which is why Nick is the tragic figure of the story.
I agree, and this is another thing that bothers me about the new movie. Carey Mulligan doesn’t play the Daisy character as “uncaring, thoughtless, and careless.” If they were being true to the book, that’s how she would be. Instead, in the movie, she seems to truly love Gatsby but is trapped by circumstances. (She almost…almost…makes that phone call at the end.)
The book is much more cynical about Daisy, describing her as “conspiring” with Tom at the end to pin the death on Gatsby. No second thoughts, no deep regrets, no long, lingering last looks. Just a shallow, self-centered person acting selfishly when her ass is on the line. Making her out to be any other sort of person undercuts the message of the novel.
Huh. I read the book very recently, and I didn’t get that. If anyone’s familiar with that passage, would you mind quoting it?
I didn’t find Daisy especially loathsome in the book or the movie, but I thought she was equally weak-willed in both. Her major failing is cowardice: her only real moment of courage is when she tells Gatsby that she once loved Tom, and that much courage seems to have broken her. She totally wants to call Gatsby in the movie (and, possibly, the book), but she’s too frightened to do so. If she had, she might have saved his life, by removing him from the danger zone.
I see what you did there.
Sure. The scene is in Daisy and Tom’s kitchen on the night of the accident, after Gatsby has gone home. Nick is watching from outside, unseen:
My emphasis. Nick is not describing Daisy as a weak, unwilling participant in the scheme, but rather as a ready conspirator, neither happy nor unhappy about the part she is playing in destroying Gatsby to save her own skin.
Nick drives the point home with this passage toward the end of the book:
Oh, and there is no indication in the book that Daisy even considered calling Gatsby.
I seem to recall my wife offering the theory that Daisy ran watshername down on purpose, but I didn’t care for the material enough to analyze or debate it.
This passage you quote is literally exactly what was portrayed in the movie. Having not read the book in a million years, I remember watching that scene and being struck by how. . . intimate and undisturbed the two were acting.
For what it’s worth, my take away from the movie was that Daisy is just awful. Again, I don’t remember much from reading the book back in the day, so I’m almost entirely going off of the film. Daisy comes across as selfish, needy, and just generally awful.
No DiosaBellissima, I disagree about how the movie depicts that scene, and it gets back to how Carey Mulligan plays the character. In that scene in the movie, she appears reluctant and remorseful. Sadness is written all over her face. She seems like she is only very hesitantly going along with what Tom is suggesting, but remains deeply regretful about it. That is very different from the way it’s written in the book, where she seems to Nick to be neither happy nor unhappy, and is simply conspiring, matter-of-factly, with her husband.
I don’t know whether Carey Mulligan decided to play the character that way, or whether she was directed to do so, but I think it was a bad idea, as it runs counter to the nature of the character as depicted in the book. I suspect this is the director at work, since we also get the scene of Daisy picking up the phone and almost…almost…making the call to Gatsby. Not something that happens in the book, and it makes her character seem more conflicted than she is in the novel.
Daisy just seems more “careless” in the book (to use the author’s word), whereas in the movie it seems like she is more torn, but somehow feels trapped by circumstances. It’s the difference between being a villain and being some sort of tragic romantic figure.
:BUMP:
Saw it and surprisingly, I liked it a lot.
I’m not a fan of the book. I think it is an OK story that is, in my very humble opinion, not very well written. I would only somewhat recommend the book.
This movie, which is far far superior to the 70’s one, I am surprised to say I would highly recommend. Everyone is very good in it and I think Leonardo Dicaprio nailed the role of Gatsby. Heck, Maguire nailed the role of Nick as well.
I went in with low expectations and came away stunned with enjoyment. What a happy surprise.
My wife liked it a lot too and she had not read the book and didn’t know the plot of the book in advance. She gasped when Wilson killed Gatsby. She didn’t see it coming.
Two thumbs up from me and Mrs. Mahaloth!