The Great Gatsby 2013

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

When I was in high school, I entered a contest in which I wrote a thesis about "The Great Gatsby;" then, and now, it is one of my favorite novels of all time. What I had going for me even then was a past laden with secrets and a voracious appetite for books, poetry, philosophy, art and music. I remember that my piece focused on the book's battle between Manifest Destiny and the Old Guard. The tightly controlled and linguistically beautifully littered novel has so many things to write "about" that people still grow uncomfortable talking about, writing about, and "figuring out" this novel. I never try to figure anything out, and never have, which is why I think I am able to enjoy the sorrowful sweetness of this novel, for I somehow knew, even as a 17 year old, the pain and glory that exist ever at once in the very act of being alive. I guess I was never a true intellectual but always a poet, even when reading or watching movies.

I saw Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" last night in a special screening at the LACMA...

First of all,

Go see it. Go see it for every reason you do and do not want to see it. Celebrate yourself when you see it, for you are a product of this movie and the movie is a product of you.

Caveat: I think Leo is our greatest living actor after Daniel Day Lewis. Caveat 2 was my admission about my wax nostalgic on the pain of loving this novel. Caveat 3 is that I love Baz Luhrmann's "Strictly Ballroom" and "Romeo + Juliet" is one of my favorite treatments of that play on film. What I am trying to say is this: I am this film's target market. I was so excited when I was invited early to this movie that I jumped up and down. Several times.

My friend thought, after the movie, that it would not be well received: that it doesn't cater to the masses, (what? Jay-Z and his folks did the soundtrack!); that the frame of the film, using Nick Carraway's voice to create a character didn't work for him nor the movie (my friend is the opposite of the masses, by the way); that the editing was odd and the script was bad.

I disagreed completely. But recall what I said above: I never try to figure anything out. I feel about Fitzgerald the way I feel about Rumi. It isn't so much that everything can be completely intellectually compartmentalized and understood but that it can be expressed and received like those "boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past," which is the last line of the novel and a beautiful way to experience it. We are not different than the jazz age, even if the hipsters and the hip hoppers of today are the flappers and the jazzers of nearly 100 years ago.

The book was not well received at its time of publication, so I have read, although now, those of us who romanticize it (like me!!!!) defend it as one of the great American novels. I do this because it somehow blends what is great about America (the ability to dream, to create from that dream, and to do it for love... or fantasy) while exposing and shading in, deftly as a painter, a few harsh truths about America (a history of violence and racism, a love of money and greed, a self-entitled arrogance) while yet battling against the "old world" which America was/is trying to escape (and which it has also now become) in which those who "have" use the marketing myth of simple family values to maintain power and in which no matter how hard one tries, "new money" or "new success" is always one misstep away from crucifixion (tweeting about Justin Bieber being gay whether or not he is without regard to the fact that he is also a person, tearing Brittney Spears apart for going through a crisis when the girl needed help- WE build these people up and prop them up and create the mystical status they enjoy and then angrily tear them down saying "I don't pity them for being young, rich and beautiful," when WE were the ones co-creating them.)

You see, the Great Gatsby is all of these things.

This film is so gorgeous, you're going to want to see it just for the spectacle. It is not only a more fully realized expression of the novel than we have ever seen on film before (I've even seen the black and white Alan Ladd film noir version) but it also taps into "our" "modern" jazz age, hip hop, in a manner that is at once effacing and at once inviting. The art deco designs and dresses and suits pop forth from the screen even without the 3-d effects.... and with an incredible score and soundtrack that is almost too emotionally controlling, featuring everything from Gershwin and Jack White, to Beyonce and Sia, to Beethoven and Kanye and Jay-Z. Luhrmann is a great one for the decadence of the novel....

But the real reason to see this movie- for all that snow globe of art deco imagery, of artsy decadence, of beautiful writing and words poetically expressed against a lush visual backdrop.... for all that INCREDIBLE music and ironic use of racism and outright use of race still prevalent today... for any pensive look from Carey Mulligan as Daisy and Joel Edgerton's (I AM a fan, remember) explosive control, like the US bombing Nagaskai, performance as Tom Buchanan..... for the amazing contrast between color, and its broad painting of the haves and have nots.... for Isla Fisher's almost painful yearning to become a part of new America....

Is Leo.

He is, quite simply, an amazing Gatsby. He is vulnerable, and frightened, and smooth and handsome and glorious all at the same time. He is devious and innocent all at once. He is always laughing and crying just under an obsessive surface, and if at time the obsession comes to bear almost too much, in this film, a special treatment of that obsession slowly unfurls as we learn about his dream of freedom and creation and love and ardent faithfulness to that dream and to that love. And at once the love isn't the love of Daisy and is, Gatsby himself is within and without as is Nick Carraway (the narrator of the book and movie, played by Tobey Maguire), and the love of Daisy is almost more a placeholder and impetus for a love of creation.

So I'm perhaps not cynical enough to explain why my friend didn't like the movie. Maybe I just don't want to go there. After all, I saw the film among fans of the book who dressed as flappers for the occasion. I think there are those who are too smart for their own good and they die angry alcoholics not realizing the beauty of the world, or worse, realizing the beauty of the world and writing about it and yet feeling isolated and alone in a world which "values things rather than cares about them," to quote another Fitzgerald work which I cannot remember but know only the line. It's a beautiful spectacle and I loved the music so much I want to buy the soundtrack.

I think you should all go see the movie, because despite what my friend says, it DOES take something beautiful and literary and prepare it for the masses of 2013. And it exposes a lot about us and a lot about love, just like the beautiful novel. AND. And. And. It is one of Gatsby's great parties, really, to which you are invited to come watch... And it is a HELL of a lot of fun!