Weekend Ramblings: THE GREAT GATSBY (movie review)

The Great Gatsby has long been one of my favorite books, so when I first heard that Baz Luhrmann was making a movie adaptation, I was both hesitant and excited.  More than anything, I wanted the movie to be true to the book, and in this, I was not disappointed.  Plus, the cinematography was spectacular!  Of the more significant changes:

• In the movie, the framing of the story is that Nick is writing the book about Gatsby as part of therapy after the fact.
• The Nick/Jordan relationship is downplayed.
• Some things are shown explicitly which were only assumed or left to speculation, such as Tom telling Wilson who owned the yellow car and Daisy trying to call Gatsby before she left for Chicago.

I did note that many of the underlying themes were drawn out and accentuated, losing the book’s subtleties.  For instance, the conversation between Nick and Gatsby in which Nick claims that you can’t repeat the past, and Gatsby replies, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” turns into a full conversation, instead of those two simple lines in the book.

The only major complaint I had about the movie was the anachronistic music.  With everything else so exquisitely portraying the era, the music seemed to jerk me out of the time period in a way that was jarring.

 

Interested in more retellings and adaptations?  Today’s the last day to sign up for Classics Retold, a blogger project in which book bloggers are joining together this September to highlight some of our favorite classics and read and review their retellings.

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