The Great Gatsby (Movie 2013): Lost Essence

The Great Gatsby 2013 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. A troubled production reportedly budgeted at/up to $127 million, The Great Gatsby became a somewhat surprising global hit, raking in $353.6 million worldwide, $208.8 million of which internationally.

The Great Gatsby (movie 2013) review: Charismatic Leonardo DiCaprio, but the essence of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1925 novel has been lost in the glitz

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby may well be the best version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1925 novel ever committed to the screen. But don’t get too excited. The bar is very low.

The book has been made into three features, including a 1926 silent film regrettably lost, and one TV movie. The last big-screen version was in 1974, a Jack Clayton-directed misfire that starred a lifeless Robert Redford in the title role. Here, the doomed personification of the money-solves-everything American thesis is played by a winning Leonardo DiCaprio who shines like an old-fashioned movie star.

But shining even brighter than DiCaprio in this (reportedly up to) $127 million production is, of course, its director.

A Baz Luhrmann film

For better or worse, Baz Luhrmann is a brand name, a noun that can double as an adjective. You know exactly what you’re getting when you step into one of his funhouses of color, sound, and CGI, and to expect something else is to criticize Baz Luhrmann for making a Baz Luhrmann film. And yet, in the context of this source material, his over-the-top rendering of the bubbly bacchanalias that establish the heights from which Gatsby must fall is completely justified and one of the more appropriate uses of Luhrmann’s gifts.

Where his iteration of the venerated source material teeters is when the hip-hop music stops playing, the champagne stops flowing, and Gatsby’s true motivations are revealed. Subtleties of mood and the complexities of multiple, intertwining characters are just not in Luhrmann’s wheelhouse.

I guess one can say, with apologies to Duke Ellington, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that emotional swing” – the one that sees Gatsby devolve from post-WWI hedonist to heartbreakingly empty soul who has destroyed himself trying to reclaim the love of Daisy Buchanan (played by Carey Mulligan).

That said, Luhrmann did get closer to the target than many would have thought possible, certainly enough to proclaim The Great Gatsby a mild success. It’s also fair to say that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third and most celebrated novel may just be too difficult to translate to the screen effectively.

Much too much

The Great Gatsby was originally slated for release in December 2012, but was pulled from the Warner Bros. schedule. This is never a good sign, no matter how a studio spins it. With the extra months of reconsideration, Luhrmann should have scaled back the WTF framing device, where a suicidally alcoholic Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) sits in a sanitarium furiously writing about his time with Gatsby like a Jazz Era Jack Kerouac.

With his ever-boyish face always in a state of slight wonderment, Maguire goes from innocent to less innocent, which is the smallest arc one can travel with this character and still make it work. As Nick conveys via narration (which also should have been scaled back), he came to New York with dreams of being a bond trader in the heady, pre-Crash year of 1922. He has taken residence in an unimpressive home in West Egg, Long Island, right across the sound from his cousin Daisy and her insensitive, racist husband Tom (Joel Edgerton, well cast).

One can’t imagine what attracted Daisy to Tom in the first place, though his massive amounts of inherited wealth would be a good guess. This contrasts nicely with Gatsby who, as we know from novel and film, came from nothing and earned his fortune through the hard work that became synonymous with American moxie (or, one can argue, American folly).

The Great Gatsby 2013 with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan: Among its award season wins and nominations, The Great Gatsby topped the San Diego Film Critics‘ and the British Academy Awards’ Best Production Design category.

The new Cary Grant

The role of the enigmatic, larger-than-life Jay Gatsby would seem a difficult one to cast in an age when movie stars have been replaced by whatever pre-digested superhero is easiest to market and promote. Consider us lucky that one of the only movie stars left in American film makes a terrific Gatsby. There are moments when Leonardo DiCaprio, who previously worked with Luhrmann in 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, looks the heir apparent to Cary Grant.

Our first head-on shot of Gatsby shows the character as the very embodiment of America’s unbridled optimism. His reputation as a good-time Charlie is surpassed only by his opacity. To the hundreds of guests who excitedly converge upon his bedazzled mansion, he’s a glamorous riddle, a thrower of epic house parties who might have been a spy or might be related to Kaiser Wilhelm, no one really knows.

During the wild, Luhrmann-esque celebration that gets the film going, Nick is stunned that such a rich and powerful charmer would seek him out and offer his companionship, starting the very next day. But Gatsby has his reasons for lifting his veil of secrecy to such a commoner, and that reason is, of course, Daisy.

As the object of desire for two strong-willed men, Daisy is a tough role to cast. It’s a character who’s always better left to our imagination. Carey Mulligan, a fine young actress, never quite finds the center of the character, an ideal woman desirous of being desired, yet unable to assume the burden of being Gatsby’s obsession.

Not great enough

The best way to enjoy The Great Gatsby – in fact, the only way to enjoy The Great Gatsby – is to ignore its grander themes about the American dream revealed. No one should want Baz Luhrmann to spend over $100 million filming our high-school book report.

The Great Gatsby had its best chance to resonate with audiences as the story of a man who labored for years to gain unimaginable wealth and limitless power solely to win back the girl who got away. We’d gladly accept the (sure, fine, whatever) anachronistic music and the visual extremes for which we gleefully punish Luhrmann as long as our hearts broke when Gatsby is stripped of his high-toned artifice to become Jay Gatts once again.

But at the basic character level, The Great Gatsby isn’t great enough.

A failure of scale

The juxtaposition of ultimately small people against such grand and gaudy excess is part of what makes the novel so effective and where Luhrmann’s vision is revealed as disappointingly two-dimensional – ironic, since the film is in 3D, which is sprinkled lightly throughout.

There are even characters from the novel that Luhrmann and co-adaptor Craig Pearce simply don’t know what to do with, like golfer and proto-modern woman Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki, a fascinating find), mechanic George Wilson (Jason Clarke), and his wife Myrtle (Isla Fisher, tarted up until unrecognizable).

As with all movie adaptations of beloved source material, it’s easy to knock The Great Gatsby for what it isn’t, than praise it for what it is. One can half-jokingly conclude that Baz Luhrmann took the assignment just to throw money at the party scenes, but his film never feels disrespectful to F. Scott Fitzgerald or dismissive of his work.

It’s just harder to be affected by the novel’s small, sad truths when the movie version was directed by someone who can only think big.

The Great Gatsby (movie 2013) cast & crew

Director: Baz Luhrmann.

Screenplay: Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce.
From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Amitabh Bachchan, Elizabeth Debicki, Max Cullen, Callan McAuliffe, Jack Thompson, Barry Otto, Gemma Ward.
Cameo: Baz Luhrmann.

Cinematography: Simon Duggan.

Film Editing: Matt Villa, Jason Ballantine, and Jonathan Redmond.

Music: Craig Armstrong.

Production Design: Catherine Martin.

Producers: Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin, Douglas Wick, Lucy Fisher, and Catherine Knapman.

Production Companies: Bazmark Films | Red Wagon Entertainment | A + E Networks.

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Running Time: 141 min.

Countries: Australia | United States.

“The Great Gatsby (Movie 2013): Lost Essence” notes

The Great Gatsby 2013 box office information via boxofficemojo.com.

The Great Gatsby 2013 movie credits via the American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog website.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan The Great Gatsby 2013 movie images: Warner Bros.

“The Great Gatsby (Movie 2013): Lost Essence” last updated in April 2023.