Film Review
F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great
Gatsby is one of the most important works in American
literature. A powerfully moving study in the folly of pursuing an
unattainable love to the exclusion of all else, it offers both a
startlingly vivid evocation of the period between the wars and an
intensely ironic critique of the American dream. In a few
pages, Fitzgerald crafts a haunting parable for out times,
contrasting the moral and spiritual vacuity of those who live within
the bubble of excessive wealth with the flawed heroism of one man who,
Canute-like, attempts to hold back time and resurrect a lost love, only
to end up building a vast empty mausoleum to a forgotten romance.
How could such a beautiful and incisive piece of literature fail to
make the transition from the printed page to the silver screen?
Director Jack Clayton may have read F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel but he
doesn't appear to have understood it, if his film is anything to go
by. This third adaptation of
The
Great Gatsby is superficially attractive, offering all the usual
Hollywood glamour - a stylish cast, pretty sets and lush soft-focus
photography - but it singularly fails to deliver the emotional power
and beguiling insights into the human condition offered by the original
novel. Robert Redford's Gatsby has none of the complexity,
mystique and pathos of Fitzgerald's creation and merely comes across as
a deluded, manipulative socialite, grinning inanely and looking like
someone posing for the front cover of
Vogue.
Mia Farrow's Daisy is even further from the
mark, an empty-headed narcissistic blonde who gives a good impression of
Deborah Kerr on her way back from an LSD trip - how can we be expected
to believe that this pathetic creature could possibly inspire a man to
go to such extraordinary lengths to recapture her after their brief
encounter during the war? Only Bruce Dern's Tom Buchanan is
faithful to the novel, but this is small comfort when the parts of
Gatsby and Daisy are such flagrant misfires.
This is a classic example of a film adaptation that tries too hard to
reproduce the literal content of its source novel whilst completely
overlooking its meaning. Francis Ford Coppola's screenplay
follows Fitzgerald's novel almost to the letter, and Jack Clayton is
just as slavish in his direction, blindly sticking to the book like a
talentless cook following a complicated recipe. The film may well
be effective in capturing the period in which the story is set
- the exuberance of the Jazz Age coupled with the staggering inequalities
that existed between the various strata of American society - but it
completely neglects what Fitzgerald is really saying in his novel and
it just feels like a hollow exercise in populist
filmmaking. However, if this lavish monument to crass
insipidity encourages people to pick up Fitzgerald's novel and discover
a great work of literary art, then that can be no bad thing.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Jack Clayton film:
Room at the Top (1959)
Film Synopsis
In 1922, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who earns a modest income
selling bonds, moves into a bungalow between two mansions on Long
Island in New York. One of the mansions belongs to Nick's distant
cousin Daisy Buchanan and her millionaire husband Tom; the other is
owned by a reclusive businessman named Jay Gatsby, who hosts lavish
evening parties throughout the summer. Rumours about Gatsby's past and
how he acquired his fortune
abound, but the man remains a mystery. One day, Nick is invited
to one of Gatsby's parties and is taken to see his host. Nick
agrees to arrange for Gatsby to meet Daisy at his bungalow and
discovers that, during the war, the two were once passionately in
love. Whilst Daisy has moved on and now lives a comfortable, albeit
empty, existence with Tom, Gatsby still clings to the past and is
determined to revive their former passion. But time is fast
running out...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.