![\"greatgatsbyposter\"](\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/greatgatsbyposter.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDirector: \u00a0<\/strong>Baz Luhrmann Personally, I like Luhrmann and his films.\u00a0 They tend to draw a tepid response from film critics but I like the kinetic energy that is his visual trademark.\u00a0 And having never read The Great Gatsby<\/em>, I don’t feel particularly precious about a modernized adaptation that takes liberties with adding a dupstep and hip hop musical score.\u00a0 Luhrmann made his name working this formula with Romeo + Juliet<\/em> after all.<\/p>\n We see the world through the eyes of Nick Carraway (Toby Macguire) who is committed to an asylum in the 1920s, suffering from depression and alcoholism.\u00a0 He describes to his psychologist the friendship he formed with his neighbour, a wealthy business tycoon named Gatsby.\u00a0 Jay Gatsby is famous in New York for holding lavish open-invitation parties at his mansion which he attends but few people know him by sight.\u00a0 Most people are simply there to get loaded.<\/p>\n Carraway befriends Gatsby when they meet at one of these parties.\u00a0 Gatsby is a strange, lonely and eccentric millionaire.\u00a0 He seems obsessed with carrying himself as a made man, wearing out the expression ‘old sport’ to a ridiculous degree.\u00a0 We come to learn why this is later on.<\/p>\n Gatsby discovers that Carraway has a friendship with Daisy, an old flame.\u00a0 Daisy and Gatsby had a relationship ten years prior but after Gatsby left to make his fortune, Daisy marries the scoundrel Tom who is unfaithful and unkind to her.<\/p>\n What plays out is an awkward love triangle where Gatsby attempts to win back Daisy from Tom.\u00a0 Daisy clearly returns Gatsby’s affections but can’t bring herself to end her marriage.\u00a0 Tom sleeps around and cheats on Daisy but becomes infuriated when he suspects she’ll leave him for Gatsby.<\/p>\n In short, everyone comes off terribly.\u00a0 I was feeling some sympathy for one of the characters towards the end of the film but then they rather idiotically commit an act of vehicular manslaughter which put an end to that.<\/p>\n I’m not really sure what to make of The Great Gatsby<\/em>.\u00a0 I didn’t much care for it.\u00a0 I presume Luhrmann is reasonably faithful to the core themes of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel and viewed from the perspective of literature written in the 1920s, perhaps it was considered insightful or poetic to observe that the filthy rich aristocracy have relationship problems and struggle to find happiness?<\/p>\n As a contemporary film, its probably not the right time for The Great Gatsby<\/em>.\u00a0 Not when America is currently facing the greatest wealth imbalance it has ever seen, with an ever growing divide between the haves and the have nots.\u00a0 Gatsby is a fraud, he does nothing meaningful or charitable with his fortune and he surrounds himself with vain, self obsessed socialites.\u00a0 The film asks us to sympathize with him by the time the credits roll and to be honest, I couldn’t tell if Luhrmann was trolling us or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Mediocre Gatsby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1652,858,2169,2168,1653],"class_list":["post-11390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-baz-luhrmann","tag-carey-mulligan","tag-isla-fisher","tag-joel-edgerton","tag-leonardo-di-caprio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11390"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17120,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11390\/revisions\/17120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>Baz Luhrmann
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Leonardo Di Caprio, Toby Macguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher<\/p>\nT<\/span>here are some films where you know within ten minutes whether you’ll like it or not.\u00a0 With The Great Gatsby<\/em>, the latest film from Baz Luhrmann, you can probably make that call based on the poster.\u00a0 How receptive are you to watching The Great Gatsby<\/em> In Real 3D featuring music by Jay-Z?<\/p>\n