Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
The first trailer for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby has just been released, and there's already been a lot of buzz and speculation that Fitzgerald lovers, purists, and traditionalists will be less than pleased with it (you can, and should, watch the trailer here. It's amazing).
The Huffington Post tweeted this morning that "The first trailer for 'Great Gatsby' has arrived. Avert your eyes, Fitzgerald fanatics!"
Further:
"The Great Gatsby" trailer has arrived with the familiar and era-appropriate tones of the Jay-Z and Kanye West collaboration, "No Church in the Wild." You crazy for this one, Baz Luhrmann!
Based on the famed F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, Luhrmann's adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular great one, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan and Joel Edgerton as her husband, Tom.
If you needed further proof that this isn't your father's "Gatsby," -- beyond the anachronistic music cue, of course -- try this on for size: Luhrmann's film will get released in 3D, since nothing needs an extra dimension like classic 1925 prose.
WSJ's Speakeasy blog chimes in to make a similar point:
“The Great Gatsby” is set during the Jazz Age, but a new movie version is adding a dose of hip hop. A trailer for the coming adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire has hit the web and it’s causing a stir with literature purists. The film, based on the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and directed by Baz Luhrmann, is scheduled for release this Christmas. The trailer opens in the proper setting of 1922 but the musical selection – Kanye West’s and Jay-Z’s “No Church in the Wild”– is awfully contemporary.
NYDN's Page Views blog notes that this is not your "high school teacher's F. Scott Fitzgerald," while adding "It certainly doesn't look like Luhrmann skimped on the costumes or set design, as both appear to be faithful to the Prohibition-era Long Island where the novel is set."
As a traditionalist and a lover of all-things-Fitzgerald, I was completely captivated by the trailer. The two-minute clip is lush, decadent, and sexy--three qualities that Fitzgerald was not unfamiliar with. Let's not forget that Fitzgerald was the consummate alcoholic who, with his wife Zelda, were glamourous socialites on the New York circuit during the twenties. As a testament to that, in 1929, Fitzgerald wrote "A Short Autobiography" for The New Yorker in the form of a catalog of cocktails:
In 1913, when Fitzgerald was seventeen, we have, “The four defiant Canadian Club whiskeys at the Susquehanna in Hackensack.” For 1920, the year he marries his southern belle, he writes, “Corn liquor by moonlight in a deserted aviation field in Alabama.” In 1921, following the success of This Side of Paradise, celebration is in the air with “Champagne in the Savoy Grill.” In 1925, when The Great Gatsby was published, there is fruit brandy and a hint of sadness: “Kirsch in a Burgundy inn against the rain with E. Hemingway.” The theme (and fear) of emotional bankruptcy was important to Fitzgerald, which is something to keep in mind when reading his 1929 entry: “A feeling that all liquor has been drunk and all it can do for one has been experienced, and yet—”. . . and yet, he continues in French, some more wine, please. Here, the reader begins to sense that as the decade of jazz and flappers and liquor comes to a close, Fitzgerald’s honeymoon with life is ending.
In other words, Fitzgerald embodied the excesses of the Jazz Age, excesses that Luhrmann's trailer captures perfectly. And even though Luhrmann opts for hip hop rather than jazz as background music--which has already become a source of comment and consternation--the two are close substitutes: jazz, in the twenties, was considered hot, morally degenerate, and libertine. And, to a certain audience, the same can be said of hip hop today.
The movie is scheduled to hit theaters on Christmas Day. I, for one, cannot wait.
- Comment (17)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments:
Dec '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
This version may capture some of the life of the novel in a way that the slow-moving Robert Redford version did not; after all The Great Gatsby is of a period but is not a period piece. What bothers me about the trailer, though, isn't the hip hop or the visual excess, it's the line readings: everyone, with the exception of DiCaprio, sounds like he or she is reciting instead of speaking. The Great Gatsby can survive without jazz on the soundtrack, but there must be jazz in the words.
Aug '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
My heart sank when I saw "In 3D" at the end of the trailer.
Apr '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
I love Fitzgerald, and this still looks fascinating to me. Though why it needs be in 3D I'll never know. Still, modernizing can help create parallels in our minds and understand the attitudes and decadence of yesterday by comparing it to those of this day. It's a useful tool, if done well.
Aug '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
I'm hot and cold on Luhrmann. Strictly Ballroom is one of my favorite movies, but I loathe Moulin Rouge. The trailer makes this look closer to the "spectacle spectacle" of the latter film.
May '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
I would not be surprised if in the modern film version Nick were portrayed as a closeted homosexual lusting after the alluring Gatsby.
Aug '10
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
That was nagging at me as well. I'm OK with the idea of anachronisms in stylized movies; Luhrmann hit some good notes with pop songs in Moulin Rouge. But the dialogue seems more out of place than the sub-par hip-hop they plastered over the trailer.
Maybe it's delivered better in context, but that "You always look so cool" line just doesn't evoke the same momentous emotion Fitzgerald gave it in the book. The point of Gatsby's style was to highlight what people hid underneath, not the style itself.
...then again, I am one of the minority heretics who never liked the original Gatsby in novel form, either. So my opinion should be dismissed out of hand by actual Fitzgerald fans.
Jun '10
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Unfortunately for me, the most distracting thing was DiCaprio. I was letting it all kind of wash over me, and then....screeeeeech!
Hollywood needs to fire Every. Single. Solitary. Southern dialect coach.
(Okay, at least his)
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Looks better than the Alan Ladd version, or the gauzy and inert Redford take. I'm not a fan of DiCaprio, who always seems to be angry about constipation, but it's a tough character to play.
I’ll go to the 3D version just for the scenes in Times Square. There’s a wealth of buried detail in the trailer’s brief look at the Crossroads of the World: The Hotel Sayre, for example. There wasn’t any such place.
That’s the Astor.
Why would they do that? I’ll bet the shot lasts just a few seconds, hardly long enough for anyone to notice, unless you’re struck immediately by the obvious contours of the Astor. (The curved lights at the top give it away.) Even then, only a few would get it.
“Sayre” was Zelda’s maiden name.
Dec '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
I can't disagree there, but it least it doesn't sound like he's reading his lines off a teleprompter like the rest of the cast...or like certain constipated politicians I could mention.
A few members have noted the sorry southern accents on display. As a native of South Carolina, I've become desensitized to Hollywood's version of Dixie-speak. I accept it in the way that I accept that although John Grisham movies are set in the present day South, no on has an air conditioner. My only question: aren't Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick from the Midwest? Why the switch? Because Zelda was from Alabama? Or because all fly-over states are the same?
Apr '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
I never got over what Luhrmann did to Romeo and Juliet. I found the film so distracting with other nonsense that I couldn't focus on the dialogue - the essence of the story. I fear I'm going to get the same thing here - and in 3D!
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Like me, Gatsby was born in North Dakota, and attended college in Minnesota. The similarity stops there; I can't stand Daisy.
Apr '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Looks like crap, sounds like crap...why is everybody whispering beneath the loud disconcerting hip-hop soundtrack?
A Christmas turkey or a Christmas ham?
DiCaprio looks like he has malaria.
Edited on May 23, 2012 at 8:43pmMay '12
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
The music was an irritant to me as well, though I'm sure it's because the score is not yet ready.
Luhrmann has pleasantly surprised me in the past. His revival of "La bohème" didn't make a big splash, but it showed the right instincts - opera was once a medium that appealed to the high brow and the low, but now is only enjoyed by a few (at least, in the States). Fitzgerald's first two books were best-sellers, but today's "literary masterpieces" typically only reach that status if Oprah gets involved. So if Luhrmann can capture a little more of that universal appeal, great. I'll look forward to seeing what he does with this.
No, I agree with you (and I have to teach the thing on a regular basis). The Beautiful and Damned is my Fitzgerald of choice. The Great Gatsby always seemed to lack that ineffable quality of greatness. But history disagrees.
Aug '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Ah, I really like The Great Gatsby. And I know a kajillion words of literary criticism have been written about it (I'm guilty of writing a few thousand myself), and that such overanalysis can really suck the joy out of a good book. But I'm going to cross my arms and stamp my feet and yell I DON'T CARE! I still like it.
Jun '10
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Subtlety is not Luhrmann's forte. His Australia was laugh-out-loud hilarious - unintentionally so. One-dimensional characters. Childish dialogue. There are parts of Moulin Rouge I like because it's so over the top, broke some new ground and had some clever visual effects. It was self-conscious enough to know it was a farce - for the most part.
Gatsby just seems to be one of those stories that no one seems to be able to get right. It's definitely not a Lurhmann vehicle. It might be handled better by a director like Peter Weir or Terry Mallick...a director who knows the importance of silence and the pensive moment.
Aug '10
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
Well, wouldn't you be?
Jun '11
Re: Would Fitzgerald Have Liked Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby" Trailer?
I'll second your qualified praise for Moulin Rouge, though I was surprised how well it stood up to a second viewing. Just about the best story for Luhrmann's talents, such as they are.
I just don't see the fit re: Gatsby... perhaps a remake of The Cotton Club would be more up his alley?