The what Gatsby?

Hello readers! I assume there's one or two of you who check the page regularly, my traffic thingo reports so. And as such, I think keeping topics current is the best thing for the health of this blog.

SO I'll tell you what I think of the new Great Gatsby movie, and the book. First off, the book.

It's great and grand and wonderful. It's on many lists, and everybody seems to enjoy it.

Now the movie?

The background of the information seems totally relevant here.

Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Director: Baz Luhrman.

Being Australian I guess I'm meant to be all "HEY YEAH AND AUSSIE FILM MAKER WOO!" but I'm quite the opposite. He's made five films now;

Strictly Ballroom (1992)
Romeo and Juliet (1996)
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Australia (not big surprise there) (2008)
The Great Gatsby (2013)

Briefly:

Strictly Ballroom was the best of the lot. Brand new, fresh, proving you have a very simple story/theme (ugly girl who everyone ignores finally gets taken to the big dancing competition by totally fit healthy handsome young man) and make it a fun, zesty story. Still filled with moments of "oh dear, many emotions" but when isn't a romance like that? Plus this song; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNC0kIzM1Fo, which has been a favourite ever since it was introduced to a new generation of viewers.

The story, in it's parts, were fun and exciting, and the stories being retold as different characters revealed their flaws/past etc really made it a fun and refreshing tromp through a dancing movie spectacular. Obviously it was a smash hit, and soon after came...

Romeo and Juliet. This was nice hard balls, but also a kind of dooming. It revamped Romeo and Juliet, again for the modern audience, but I think that's a waste of Baz's potential. The movie is very good, but I never watch beyond the opening gunfight. That's enough for me, the bad ass-ery, the lines, the ramp, the angst -- it's all good and proper and chunky, so I take as much of that mouthful as I can and then move on. Truth is, if I wanted Romeo and Juliet, I'd man up, take the patience it required (I'm coming from a modern audiences perspective here) and watch a proper, ye-olde rendition, with period clothings and all.

That isn't to say that Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet isn't good -- it's amazing what he's done with it. A proper and true reinvention, with this song; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcYu5Vg_YH8. I love me some Radiohead, but that's beside the point.

It's a great movie, and still a powerful reworking, but essential like a showcasing of Luhrman's creative spasticism, which is new to movies so let's see what else we can do with it, yeah?

That means onto Moulin Rouge. Jedi and Nicole Kidman are a good mix, right? Luhrman co-wrote Moulin Rouge, hoping to recreate a Bollywood vibe, and calling on Orpheus and You're-a-dice. Beyond that, the story is cute and sweet, with a billion songs, and again the flip mad crash fast dance that his movies take on. It's a good and electrifying journey, with high emotions again, but with all the modern songs (when the movie is set in 1899 FRANCE) we are again seeing the modernisation of what seems like an old classic story, ironically. Baz Luhrman has made his own film modernised before it's own release and existance -- there is something to be said for that. If he had've used songs from that era it would've been much more of a classic romance tragedy, and attracted fewer viewers who could actually understand the movie too.

"I don't know, it's a bit," is a comment I hear quite often when people watch older movies. It's as though if it doesn't pass the modern audience attention span test (note: 1*0.8 to the power of negative infinity) it wont work. Plus this song is in it, minus Sting as the singer; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T1c7GkzRQQ.

Good tune. Eitherway, the emotions of Moulin Rouge are the highest, and it allows the most for Luhrman's unique style to speak entirely for itself, but it still stinks of "modernising" everything for the current audience. If that brings this movie up to date, it also threatens to obsolete the movie before too many years, as people look at a movie from 2000 about the France adult entertainment area from 1899, and wonder why there's no songs from then.

As Luhrman's second "true" film (Romeo/Juliet and the Great Gatsby are both reworkings of established movies, and Australia... well...) its good to see the progression in his spending budget, because the sets are huge and the cast is understated but enormous. Did you know Norman Gunston is in Moulin Rouge? And he was YEARS before Borat/Sacha Baren Cohen, and doing the exact same shtick of "incompetant embarassing interview personality".

Moulin Rouge's competition, unfortunately, was Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb's own CHICAGO made movie-cal, so it had no chance when it came to awards and whatnot. Despite the fact that Renee Zell-wig-er and Catharine Zeta-Jones are actors rather than singers, while Kidman and McGregor seem much more naturally multi-range entertainers, it's apparently easier to win awards for making "the movie" of "the musical" that you're famously well known for. Moulin Rouge did win for Best Art Direction and Best Costume design. Anything else kinda went to Chicago.

That creates a bit of a sting, when the awards seem to say "Nice job, little Australian. Now try harder, and we might give you awards for directing, or to your actors for acting. But not now, try harder."

Australia we can skip entirely, because I haven't watched it. From what I've heard there is mixed reviews, and the general Australia seems to enjoy it because it's a story about Australia, but all I know is Wolverine kisses a lot of Nicole Kidman, and punches a lot of blokes.

NOW, the Great Gatsby. Everything I say will be WITHOUT having seen the movie, but I imagine pretty damn close to accurate.

tl;dr Baz Luhrman's directing will make the movie too damn jumpy and fun, which the parties of the time WERE but not the real day life, nor long boring stints of time between parties. It was not one giant party back then, and that's one of the points that the Great Gatsby sets out to make.

It's a bit like they didn't want Gatsby to work. It's a big reworking, it's 'that famous Australian director guy', but that's kinda it. Taking his exuberant performances previously (in particular Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom) we can guess that the movie will be quick, smart, dashing, and over before we know it. How well will we know Gatsby before his end? Will we really have caught a feel for the Americas in their post war flunk, or is it all going to be one great suarez, when we finish and go "yes, 'twas a great movie, poor chap that Gatsby! Righto move-on move-on, I'm hungry blast the devil!"

I imagine that will be the case. Despite all the money thrown into this, the calling upon of Baz Luhrman to not do an original film is bad balls indeed. Maybe Australia really stank, so they wanted him to prove he "still has it", and Gatsby is that chance, but as I said I've missed that movie, and can't comment. From what I've heard, he just has the ability to write and make a movie, and that'll do. If they really wanted Gatsby to shatter the world's backbone, making all the money in the world drop into their bank accounts, they would've looked elsewhere.

That is not a criticism against Luhrman - he makes a brilliant vibrant film, and can clearly do so in a good fashion. It's rather a matter of the American film industry having a great control over the Australian film business. A quick explanation?

Australian's make films, and plenty are great but totally underappreciated. Think of Jyndabyne, which you may not have even heard of. It's got Laura Lynney and plenty of good actors, but no one knows about it. It deals with a great amount of social issues, as four men go fishing, find a dead girl at their watering hole. They prepare to return home immediately, when one of then men has managed to catch a great whopping fish. No harm in staying just one day, right? The girls already dead after all.

The repurcussions when they return, with the dead girl, and the question WHY did you just continue fishing? It leads to many great questions that aren't asked in many other movies, and really forces the viewer to look hard at themselves, society, and even morality.

When an Australian movie is bought by the big movie houses, they're only sold at a ratio of 1:9. So 9 American movies for each Australian flop. And we HAVE good movies, but they usually select something awful, like Wog Boy 2 (that one was bad) or Take Away (also clearly terrible). So we're given the shaft on what good Aussie movies we get to see, without having our noses earth-deep in the secret vaults of those "in the know".

This leads into my next point. Luhrman's directing behaviour will make Great Gatsby too fast, and crazy, and it wont communicate the feeling of "jesus this is bloody awful. Which is an ODD THING to say after we've just won a war, and they're terrible, but we won so that's good but what do we do now?" It really is another schism of the soul, and to explore that, delicately, with finesse and charm, while not simply boring the audience to pieces, but also entertaining them? THAT is a directorial job for someone ABOVE a legend, or someone who's totally from a different branch, like Stanley Kubrick. He was a legend because he was originally a photographer, and he just knew how to take images, and put them into movies. Let a picture tell a thousand words, yes?

That's a digression. I don't think anyone from movies could really do the job without being a master above everyone else -- Great Gatsby is just too involved. Maybe if you had the BBCs multi-part series, that gives it the time it needs, or maybe if you're from an entirely different work of life, like photography, than you could use a language that ISN'T movie making, but rather a movie made of other things (Kubrick takings pictures, that just happen to move and have sound).

So The Great Gatsby is definitely a Hurculean task for ANY director, and I certainly don't feel Baz was the best choice for the job. I will see the movie, and I will get back to you on it, but I don't expect my opinion to really change that.

Plus have you seen Clockwork Orange? That movie was great!

J.