THE GREAT GATSBY Is a Trainwreck, Old Sport

THE GREAT GATSBY REVIEW:

- The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books. I know a lot of people say that, but it's true. Even though it's been years since I last read it, the novel left the kind of impression on me where it's been in my brain ever since. Gatsby is that kind of book - the kind whose story and characters resonate ... but what really hits you is the imagery. The isolated Gatsby peering out across the water at the just-out-of-reach Daisy, the hints of crime and corruption and lies behind his mythic persona, the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelberg staring over the city, casting judgement over those who pass beneath. For that reason, I went into the new Gatsby film pretty excited. For me, it seemed about time that a visuals-oriented director like Baz Luhrmann tackle the material. I remember, in high school, being shown the old Robert Redford / Mia Farrow version of  Gatsby, and just thinking it was all wrong. The colors, the pacing, the dialogue - everything felt so bland and straightforward. Gatsby needed flair, depth, texture. I was encouraged by what I saw from the trailers of Luhrmann's Gatsby. It seemed like he got that this was a story that needed a visually-dynamic, almost surrealist-bent in order to capture the essence of the book.

Well, as it turns out, I was very wrong. Luhrmann was not, it seems, the man for the job. Luhrmann's take on Gatsby is indeed - like his previous films - hyper visual and ultra-stylized. But here's the problem: it's all, 100% surface-level. The film is visually decadent, but there's absolutely no texture to it. And as the film goes on, it becomes a shockingly literal translation of the book - going so far as to have long stretches of dialogue and narration lifted verbatim, as the text from the novel is superimposed on the screen. The Great Gatsby - the book - is about metaphor, subtext, and images that are evocative not just of a time and place, but of an idea - the death of The American Dream. Nothing about the new movie version is evocative. In fact, it's a flat-out mess.

Now, don't tell me that such a book is untranslatable to film. Don't tell me that movies can't have subtext or depth or visual metaphor. Try telling that to the Coens or to P.T. Anderson (to name a few of the finest living filmmakers, whose best movies are the cinematic equivalents of the Great American Novel). But with this new film, Luhrmann proves that he shouldn't be put in the same category as those great directors. Yes, he can stage a party scene like nobody's business. And he makes the big party scenes in Gatsby into visual marvels that look, admittedly, pretty stunning (and really pop in 3D to boot). But that's literally the best part of Gatsby - the best scenes, by far, are two of its party scenes - one being Gatsby's extravagant affair at his decadent mansion, the other being a smaller and more sinister impromptu bit of debauchery in which Nick Carraway and Tom Buchanan engage in some sinful behavior in a Manhattan apartment. These party scenes work because they are so visually dynamic, and they give the first hour or so of the film a real energy and amusement-park-ride style appeal. But reducing The Great Gatsby to being a Roaring Twenties (in 3D!) Cirque Du Soleil show just seems wrong. And even when it works, the temporary high of those scenes soon fizzles out. The movie can only sustain that circus-like energy for its first act. Soon afterwords, it becomes a talky, plodding soap opera with really nice colors. The last thing I thought I'd be with this film was bored, but for the entire second and third acts, that's exactly what I was.

The inexplicable literalism of the film is doubly frustrating because Luhrmann insists on doing his thing where he fills the movie with modern, anachronistic pop music instead of era-appropriate tunes. This honestly sort of drove me crazy here, because the movie *could* have found a way to cleverly modernize the story, or to use the music in a way that felt meaningful or thematically resonant. But it doesn't. It's not like in Inglorious Basterds, where David Bowie's "Cat People" hypnotically recasts Holocaust survivors as punk-rock revolutionaries. Tarantino is a guy who's used anachronistic music and other stylistic choices to enhance his historical films and give them richer meaning and context. Contrast that to The Great Gatsby. Is there any particular reason why Jay Z and Beyonce are the musical selections in the film (other than Jay Z being a producer)? Is there any real thematic resonance to the songs used? As far as I could see, no, there isn't. The effect is that, when a random group of guys drive through 1920's NYC blasting "99 Problems," it's an unintentionally funny / cringe-worthy moment that takes you out of the movie.

Point being: the stylistic choices in The Great Gatsby feel pretty much arbitrary and there just because, well, that's what Baz Luhrmann does.

As far as the actors go, I felt the performances were a decidedly mixed bag. I'm more or less a pretty big fan, in general, of all of the main players here. But I didn't enjoy the performances in this film all that much, for the most part. Strangely, the only one who seems to nail it is previously-unknown (to me at least) Elizabeth Debicki as the sly and elusive female golf pro Jordan Baker. Debicki brings a casual, lived-in quality to Jordan and the movie is much better when she's on-screen. I don't think it's any coincidence that once Jordan fades into the movie's background, the film suffers.

To that end, I didn't love either Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby or Tobey Maguire as Nick. It's weird, DiCaprio has been on an awesome-acting streak of late, most recently impressing in Django Unchained. But as Gatsby, I just didn't love his approach. It's so overdone and "actorly," but not in a particularly powerful or convincing manner. It feels like him doing a voice, but not necessarily fully inhabiting a character. My impression from the book was always that Gatsby is mysterious, dangerous, a man of the shadows. Once Leo makes his big entrance as Gatsby, he's just a complete scenery chewer. It felt way off to me, and was at times grating, at times boring. Same goes for Maguire as Nick. Nick is the ultimate everyman, but Maguire is just too eccentric-seeming and goofy to be a true everyman these days. His Nick is almost comically passive, with no real opinions and no real point of view. It makes the use of Nick's narration from the book that much more jarring - we're being told that Nick feels a certain way, but we're rarely shown anything on screen that backs it up. The fact that Luhrmann uses Nick's eventual stay in a mental health institution as a framing device adds to the disparity. Nick remains a total blank slate throughout the film, and he seems to barely possess an independent thought about anything that occurs in the movie - let alone enough material to put it all into book form, as Luhrmann has him do.

The rest of the cast faces similar challenges navigating through Luhrmann's alternately gaudy then drab dream-world. Carrie Mulligan seems to be giving it her all as iconic Daisy, yet the romance between her and Gatsby seems totally limp. Again, it all comes back to the fact that their relationship is colored in metaphor and imagery in the book, but in the movie, every thought that Gatsby has about Daisy is spelled out in exhaustive detail. Meanwhile, Joel Edgerton's Tom becomes a gruff, debaucherous cartoon character. Edgerton is usually great, but he too seems confused about what tone he should be going for.

Over and over again, The Great Gatsby seems to swing wildly from one extreme to the other in terms of tone, visuals, and stylistic choices. Like I said, it's a mess. It sounds strange to write this, because in the past I've defended films for working on a purely visual level. But Gatsby undermines the power of its own visuals by rarely letting them speak for themselves. Everything feels underlined, bolded, and put on the screen in Size 32 font. By the time the movie was over, I came away with absolutely no thoughts on what it all meant, no ponderings about The American Dream, or the corrupting influence of wealth and power, or the lies America has told itself to create a perfect myth for itself. Sure, there are some surface-level allusions to the book's great themes, but it's all surface, all paper-thin. Even visually, there isn't much that really sticks with you - despite the heavy stylization, there's remarkably little sense of atmosphere to the film.

Maybe some will just get so caught up in the elaborate costumes and music-video-esque, highly choreographed party sequences that, hey, that's enough. But The Great Gatsby deserves better, and more so than that, this is just not a very good movie - with surprisingly little to say, given that it's based on a work that has stood the test of time precisely because it says so much. Like I said, I had hoped that the combination of Baz Luhrmann and The Great Gatsby would be a surprisingly potent combo. Instead, I am left feeling highly skeptical about a director who seems to just mangle source material sans rhyme or reason or vision.

My grade: C

DJANGO UNCHAINED Delivers a Fistful of Awesome

DJANGO UNCHAINED Review:

- Thank you, Quentin Tarantino. Seriously. Thank you for creating original films based on original ideas - movies that both pay tribute to cinematic history and also boldly forge something new and never-before-seen. There's a reason why film geeks scramble to get a hold of new Tarantino scripts when they're completed - they're awesome, inspired pieces of original writing. And there's a reason why a new Tarantino film is always a true event for film fans - it's because we know we're getting something special, unique, genre-bending and boundary-pushing. DJANGO UNCHAINED is the latest from QT, and oh man, it is certifiably badass. In many ways, the movie is the perfect companion piece to his last film, Inglorious Basterds. That film was Jewish revenge-fantasy, juxtaposing World War II era catastrophe with fearless glam-rock rebirth. Django forges a similar path, juxtaposing the atrocities of American slavery in the pre-Civil War South with the rebirth and empowerment and new-found sense of swagger and self that came with hip-hop music over a century later. DJANGO is over-the-top, often very funny, and full of spaghetti western-meets-grindhouse style violence. It's got a pulpy style and QT's usual knack for dialogue-driven snap. The film didn't quite floor me in the same way that some of my favorite QT films have in the past, but I still sort of loved it all the same. DJANGO is one last injection of cinematic awesome in what has been, I think, a fine year for film.

At its core, DJANGO is Tarantino's take on the Spaghetti Western genre, popularized by the great Sergio Leone films like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Tarantino has littered his films with Leone references and call-backs, but here, the entire film pays heavy tribute to Leone, even including a a few new pieces composed by the legendary Ennio Marricone (who did all of the iconic themes for Leone's films). The film also pays tribute to Sergio Corbucci, who's B-grade "Django" Westerns are the inspiration for and spiritual successors of this one. But of course, DJANGO also blends the conventions of the Spaghetti Western (including a lot of the iconic sorts of shots that Leone made famous) with the themes and tropes of Blaxploitation. This is a genre that Tarantino has certainly dabbled in a bit before, especially given that Blaxploitation films could often also be labeled what you might call "grindhouse." But DJANGO UNCHAINED places us in the Antebellum South, where we meet Django (the D is silent), played by Jamie Foxx, being led by chains through the woods alongside a group of fellow slaves. But Django's life of dehumanizing servitude takes a sudden turn when the slaves and their masters have a run in with German dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). King has taken up a bounty on the law-breaking Brittle Brothers, who have taken refuge - under assumed names - on a plantation, and is looking for a slave who can identify them. As it turns out, Django is Schultz's man. Schultz, however, detests slavery - he enters into a mutual agreement with Django in which the now-freed slave can share in the profits of he and Schultz's bounty-hunting. Django agrees to partner up with Schultz on one condition - that eventually, the Doctor will help him to find and free his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was long ago forcefully separated from her husband, and made a slave at the plantation owned by the vile and violent Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film is anchored by four incredible performances. One - Jamie Foxx as Django. Foxx faced an enormous challenge in this film - starting out as a slave who had been beaten and humiliated into submission and servitude, and slowly but surely becoming a full man - and not just a man, but a badass gunslinger not to be $&%#'ed with. Foxx does a masterful job here. Oftentimes, Django must act one way in the service of he and King's schemes, while his eyes ever so slightly betray the fact that it's all an act. For example, when King and Django go to meet Candie, Django poses as a black slave trader - the lowest of the low. Django must grapple with how far to "get into character," and the way Foxx plays it is just right. Two - Christoph Waltz is phenomenal as Dr. King Schultz. King is a fascinating character - a man who's as sharp a talker as he is a shooter. He's also a true outsider in the American South - a German who is at once repulsed by the slavery, violence, and moral bankruptcy of America but one who also has thrived and profited from that environment. Waltz makes King's character arc fascinating in its own right - perhaps even more so than Django's. But mostly, Waltz is just awesome as hell. His theatricality and flair matched with Tarantino's stylized dialogue is, again, a match made in movie heaven. Three - Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie. Candie doesn't enter into the picture until midway through the film, but he is, immediately, a scene-stealer. Suffice it to say, I've never seen DiCaprio play a role like this before - an over-the-top villain who mixes Southern Hospitality with sadistic bloodlust and an endless supply of racist hate. DiCaprio, surprisingly, makes Candie a ball of pent-up rage and madness, and that barely-suppressed craziness helps make the Candie-centric scenes spill over with tension. Four - Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, Candie's top slave and head-of-household. Wow - this is one of Jackson's best-ever performances, and one where he's not coasting on playing Sam Jackson, but a really fascinating character that is far-removed from the actor's typical persona (one which has, in many ways, been shaped by his roles in Tarantino's films). Stephen is in many ways the biggest badguy in the film - representing a slave who has a false sense of power due to his high position in the plantation, and who has been brainwashed into having ultimate loyalty to Candie and his family. Even as Django fights to be "unchained," Stephen fights for the status quo. He is the slave just strong-willed and independent-minded enough to be a useful lieutenant for Candie, but never so strong-willed as to ever question the will of his master. Of course, Stephen is a dark character, but Sam Jackson also makes him fun as hell - his verbal exchanges with Django are brilliantly funny.

The great casting doesn't end there. So many brilliant actors turn up in smaller roles that it's hard to keep track. A few that I'll mention are Don Johnson as plantation owner Big Daddy, Walton Goggins as Candie's muscle Billy Crash, M.C. Gainey - who I love from Lost and Justified - as Big John Brittle, and even Jonah Hill, who has a cameo in a hilarious scene involving a proto version of the KKK. Tarantino himself actually cameos as well, in an explosively oddball scene towards the end of the movie. I'll also give special mention to Kerry Washington, who does a fantastic job as Broomhilda Von Shaft (purportedly, an ancestor of John Shaft (!!!), according to QT). It would have been interesting had Washington played a larger role, but this is, ultimately, Django's story, and she is his princess that needs saving from horrible circumstances. But Washington infuses Broomhilda with unspoken emotion and trepidation, and it makes her eventual reunion with her husband that much sweeter.

DJANGO has a lot of the slow-build, dialogue-heavy scenes that we've come to expect from Tarantino. But as in Inglorious Basterds, they prove so well-done that it's hard to find much fault in them. Some sequences feel ever-so-slightly overlong though, and you wonder about the effect that not having the late Sally Menke on editing duties may have had. Menke, who edited all of QT's previous films, sadly passed away before DJANGO was filmed, and I do think there's a slight lack of tightness in some of the scenes as compared to films like Kill Bill and Basterds. Overall, it felt to me like parts of the film looked a little drab - lacking some of the visual richness of the Leone movies that QT was referencing. I usually leave a Tarantino film with several iconic images emblazoned in my memory - I'd say that happened less so than usual with this one. However, the movie jolts to electrifying life in a couple of key instances. One is when Tarantino utilizes flashbacks to Django and Broomhilda's past, presented in a rough, 70's grindhouse-esque style that emphasized the exploitative nature of the scenes. These, to me, were some of the most powerful scenes in the film. The other scenes that truly pop are the action scenes, which are just vintage Tarantino. The director has always had a knack for chaotic action scenes filled with one "holy $#@%!" moment after another in rapid-fire succession. And, damn, when business picks up in DJANGO UNCHAINED, it really picks up. Some of the big shoot-out scenes are just balls-to-the-wall insane.

I think the thematic point that a lot of people will want to discuss about the film is its sense of morality. For better or for worse, it's hard at this point to watch the movie completely in a vacuum, and not think, at least a little, about some of the recent shootings that have occurred across the country. What's interesting is that, despite all of the movie's over-the-top violence and pulpy nature, it actually does meditate a bit on the morality of violence. In fact, Dr. King's entire arc is sort of an exploration of this in its own, slightly-twisted way. As a bounty hunter, King kills only for money, never really making moral judgements about what he does except to justify it: killing these men is okay, because they are criminals, and he's within his legal boundaries. But at some point, King stops doing only what is profitable, and starts thinking more about what is right. Granted, even doing what is right involves gunning down bad guys - but that's another theme of the film. Django also paints a picture of an Antebellum South so brainwashed by slave culture that only a storm of bullets and hellfire could wake it up. In reality, that wake-up call was the bloodshed of the Civil War. But in Tarantino's pulp-fiction movieverse, Django was the precursor - the first shot of the Civil War came when he picked up a gun and began to turn the tables on the men who'd long abused and persecuted him and his people. This is, in many ways, a parallel to the revenge-scheme in Inglorious Basterds - over-the-top and uber-violent, but righteous in the way that it shows these characters not just fighting for themselves, but literally pushing against history. All of the violence, well, it begets violence. And Tarantino is a master at juxtaposing the empowerment of the modern minority with the delusional entitlement of the historical oppressor. Basically, the movie is a satisfying, cathartic, retroactive "#%$& you!" to the slave-owners, oppressors, and racists of the pre-Civil War South.

So like I said, thank you Quentin Tarantino. Although DJANGO UNCHAINED didn't quite register for me as the pure cinematic dynamite of your very best work, it had some of the year's most memorable performances and moments, and it was a true original. Funny, bloody, and badass to the core, this is vintage QT, and we as film fans are all better for having his movies, a defiant alternative to so much of the blandness that is out there. My main question now is ... what's next?

My Grade: A-