For its first two thirds, Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” is busy busy busy with nary a minute to avoid an onslaught of stylized metaphors. People keep asking me Is it like “Moulin Rouge”? Well no, it’s not nearly as unruly because Luhrmann has to stick– more or less- to the F. Scott Fitzgerald text. He has a structure and a story and at some point he has to get with the program. And he does. The last third of his Gatsby is one of the most beautiful, moving films I’ve ever seen. And the first two thirds? They are a joyride through the director’s wild imagination.
So we’ve got Leonardo DiCaprio as the mysterious and pained Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as the narrator Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton as Daisy and Tom Buchanan. And then are the secondary roles: Elizabeth Debicki making quite an impression as golf playing Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend; Jack Thompson (“Breaker Morant,” anyone?) as Nick’s doctor; and Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke as Myrtle and George Wilson. Everyone is quite good. The only real mistake—and it’s a doozy—is Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan as the Jewish gangster from Chicago, Meyer Wolfscheim. I don’t know what anyone was thinking. Yikes. He stands out like a sore thumb.
Maguire as Nick, of course, has to carry the film. I’ve seen it twice and he is very strong. As in “The Cider House Rules,” Maguire plays a very good observer. (I laughed when Edgerton’s Tom said to Nick: “I know you like to watch.” That is really Maguire’s talent. He’s great at it.) Even though he was the hero in “Spider Man,” Maguire’s skill is in setting himself apart from a story. That makes him a ready-made Nick. He has some things to overcome though: This screenplay tries to make it out that the author of the book is really the main character, who has authored the story we’re seeing as a memoir. They tried this in “On the Road,” pretending Sal was Jack Kerouac typing furiously onto a scroll.
It didn’t work there and it’s not such a good idea here. There’s nothing to suggest that Nick wrote a book about Gatsby after all the incidents of this story. It’s more than a little annoying but I guess they felt it had to be done as a framing device.
DiCaprio is the wild card here. [...]
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