For the most part, Luhrmann's Gatsby is quite a literal adaptation of the Fitzgerald - which isn't to say that it's necessarily a completely faithful version. The literal-ness comes from the way that much of the overall thrust, and all of the main scenes, from the source text are transposed to screen, and often very much larger than life when it comes to key images - the green light and the all-seeing eyes being the most obvious.
It feels like a sincere attempt to render 'the book itself', which inevitably - given the different medium - involves directly presenting much that comes across more obliquely in Carraway's narration, for all of its apparent detail; unsurprisingly, Luhrmann highlights the spectacular and the dramatic elements of the story, which is mostly effective although sometimes distractingly unsubtle. On the point of 'faithfulness', though, there are a range of departures - from least to most significant, the framing device of Nick's writing the book while in a sanitarium, some narration near the beginning that I'm fairly sure is more overt than anything in the novel, a rendition of Nick's relationship with Jordan Baker that seems to completely omit a romantic element, and a suggestion that Daisy tried to call Gatsby at the very end (that last, small though it is, a fundamental departure).
Taken as a whole, while it was far from greatness so far as films and film adaptations go, I quite liked it; it had something of the original for me, and I think a certain quality in its own right. Also, for whatever reason, I'm not sure those famous final words - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - have struck home quite as much on any of my readings of the novel as they did up on screen this afternoon. So that's something.
(w/ Mehnaz)
It feels like a sincere attempt to render 'the book itself', which inevitably - given the different medium - involves directly presenting much that comes across more obliquely in Carraway's narration, for all of its apparent detail; unsurprisingly, Luhrmann highlights the spectacular and the dramatic elements of the story, which is mostly effective although sometimes distractingly unsubtle. On the point of 'faithfulness', though, there are a range of departures - from least to most significant, the framing device of Nick's writing the book while in a sanitarium, some narration near the beginning that I'm fairly sure is more overt than anything in the novel, a rendition of Nick's relationship with Jordan Baker that seems to completely omit a romantic element, and a suggestion that Daisy tried to call Gatsby at the very end (that last, small though it is, a fundamental departure).
Taken as a whole, while it was far from greatness so far as films and film adaptations go, I quite liked it; it had something of the original for me, and I think a certain quality in its own right. Also, for whatever reason, I'm not sure those famous final words - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - have struck home quite as much on any of my readings of the novel as they did up on screen this afternoon. So that's something.
(w/ Mehnaz)
