Rhapsody in green

The Great Gatsby

Crit

I'm not always thrilled with Baz's work, but his William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (I love to invoke the full title) and this seem to suggest that when he takes on a text that really matters to me, he gets it. I was in rapture for about the first 2/3 of the film, and if the final act couldn't match that, it's possible that I just ran out of smiles. Things you may have heard:

• The hiphop in the soundtrack is jarringly anachronistic. Well, no, not to me, anyway. For me, the transgressive African-American music of our era slides seamlessly into the transgressive African-American music of Fitzgerald's.
• Tobey Maguire is a weird choice for Nick. Or Leo is a mistaken choice for Gatsby. Well, I'll confess that neither choice probably would have occurred to me, but there may be a reason why "filmmaking genius" rarely appears in the same sentence as my name. Now the bemusement about Luhrmann's casting the Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan as the very Jewish Meyer Wolfsheim is a fair cop, especially puzzling when Tom Buchanan refers to him as a "kike."
• The 3D is a garish sideshow. No, in fact, Baz shows thoughtful restraint (speaking of phrases and names rarely seen in the same sentence) in employing the technology. The 3D is not necessary, but it does add a certain appealing texture to the narrative.

I haven't noticed anyone pointing out how Ozlike the Manhattan skyline appears from Luhrmann's Long Island, or how Disney-castellate Gatsby's mansion looks--both smart choices. And good god, as often as I've read the novel, and as often as I've seen Casablanca, isn't it bizarre that I've never thought of Rick Blaine's deferred, then dramatic, first appearance, and the rumor that he might have "killed a man" as allusions to Gatsby? Well Baz seems to have noticed the connection, and he made me notice it, for which I'm grateful. And that points to why Baz is a genius--an erratic one, maybe, but a genius nonetheless: for all the wild liberties he may take, he is absolutely 100% invested in the spirit of the source material, and anyone else who is likewise has got to appreciate that.

Things that "belong" and things that don't--Whitman and Charles Foster Kane and little Montenegro, on the Adriatic (the line is truncated, unfortunately), and Rhapsody in Blue (used better to evoke New York only once that I'm aware of)--it's a dizzying, dazzling swirl of timeless Jazz Age lunacy, and I liked every minute and loved the vast majority of them. Baz, your Gatsby is worth the whole damn bunch of previous film versions put together!

Trailers

• Gravity--Cuarón, Clooney, and space in 3D; hopeful.
• The Lone Ranger--Full trailer, rather the teaser I'd seen, and yes, I desperately want this to be good.