Review 9: The Great Gatsby

Being an avid F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, I was desperate to see the film version of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. And so of course, I went on the second night of opening, but was I disappointed?

Having already heard about the change of beginning, I already had low hopes for this film. The start is sloppy, having Nick as an alcoholic in an institution is a lazy idea since, and i quote, he has 'only ever been drunk twice in his life'. He even says that in the movie, and yet he's an alcoholic? The whole book is told in retrospective narrative, which I think they conveyed well in the movie, although they missed out most of Jordan's focaliser. The real surprise was Tobey Maguire. They way he was so detached from the other characters was completely perfect for the role of Nick, and he was exactly how I imagined him in the book. I enjoyed the setting, West Egg and East Egg were perfectly done, and the houses fitted exactly. Gatsby's parties weren't really how I pictured them, but the director had obviously decided to have them as key features and so put most of the money into them. Overall they did show the flamboyance of Gatsby, and the introduction of him was done well. Leonardo DiCaprio did a fantastic job, although his accent was a bit odd. They must have added a lot of 'old sport's to the script, as he definitely didn't say it that much in the book.

One thing that annoyed me was how they missed out so many brilliant lines. My favourite: 'I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men' was missed, as was the line about breakfast to Gatsby at the end, which signified Nick's final goodbye to him. There were a few things that could have been corrected so easily, as in the book, Wilson uses a shotgun, not a revolver. 

As characters go, Nick and Gastby were great. Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) was absolutely perfect, really grasping Tom's essence. Wolfsheim was fabulous, George was good although he was supposed to be really skinny. Now Carey Mulligan. Although she did the sad parts well, Daisy was always supposed to be a bit more.. manipulative. She had Gatsby and Tom in the palm of her hands in the book, and the line 'her voice is full of money' (also missed out, might I add) represented how she just wanted people because of their riches. Myrtle, Isla Fisher, was also a bit of a disappointment, as she was supposed to 'carry her flesh sensuously, like no other woman can', a line again missed out. She was a good housewife, but she wasn't a Myrtle. Elizabeth Debicki was overall a good Jordan, but pretty much most of her cleverly sarcastic lines had been missed out so I felt she wasn't able to show us what she could do. She also needed to be slightly more tom-boyish, being a golf player.

They missed out a scene in New York and another scene with Klipspringer, and the entire funeral scene at the end, which I quite missed as we got to know Gatsby's father. Owl Eyes, a key character in the book, used to tell the truth about society, also only featured once, not really creating an impact at all. This made me sad, because he was supposed to crash a car earlier in the book, but it to not be his fault which foreshadows the later car incident. His line 'the books, they're all real' was also missed.

As you can probably tell, I know Gatsby inside out, and because of this, it completely clouded my judgement on the film. If I hadn't read and studied the book, I probably would have enjoyed it a whole lot more. Overall I'd give this film 7 stars out of 10 on iMDB, as I know they tried their best, but it's impossible to measure up to the greatness that is F. Scott Fitzgerald.