dvd of the week
This is the first adaptation of a F. Scott Fitzgerald work that seems to be as in love with Fitzgerald’s writing as Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) is with Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). When Nick Caraway (a most excellent Toby Maguire) isn’t narrating the Jazz Age tragedy with Fitzgerald’s own language, director Baz Luhrmann transforms the writer’s words into indelible images bursting with almost garish color and ostentatious detail. Luhrmann combined anachronistic music (chosen by Jay-Z) with sets, costumes, 3-D cinematography and CGI, and the results are simply outrageous. To me, this works so well because Luhrmann treats Fitzgerald’s lyrical, astonishingly beautiful language with the reverence it deserves. Unlike Fitzgerald, whose novel is perfectly tempered and constructed, Luhrmann makes errors of both under-emphasis and exaggeration, but the end result is still a wondrous experience, unlike anything you will see on screen this year.
