I'm back, after a brief hiatus! I'm in the middle of a few other things right now, so at the moment, I'm going to try to keep exactly on track between days and movies, until a time when I can jump a little ahead. (I like having that cushion.) Today's entry is another movie I've actually seen before (this makes four in all, to this point), but I come at it from a completely different viewpoint than previously.
I saw The Great Gatsby when I was in high school, and I hated it. I mean, really loathed it. At the time, I read reviews about it that were glowing and laudatory and thought that such things had never been written more untrue. The movie seemed interminable, I found the characters dull, the Harpy Mia Farrow I couldn't stand (which hasn't entirely changed, though now I can recognize the distinction), and I didn't even care for or understand the dancing and party scenes. And I had actually really liked the novel!
Things change.
In retrospect, I think the difficulty I never got over was that the picture in my head didn't gel with what I got onscreen. It's only now that I can truly appreciate this translation onto film.
It still feels a bit long, and Mia is still screechy and aloof to the point of exasperation, but annoying as she is, she is Daisy. The other characters are on-the-money, as well: Robert Redford's Gatsby is a romantic and has a one-track-mind; Sam Waterston's Nick is bland and slightly more moralistic, and captures perfectly the duality between scorn and appreciation for Gatsby's world; Tom is brutish and racist, devoted and stupid; Jordan is often-present and rarely-heard.
My students were confused as to why the movie went on so long after Gatsby was shot, but that's because most of them weren't paying enough attention to know that the story is only, in part, Gatsby's. The infinitely less exciting Nick Carraway is the true eyes of most of the novel (think Tommy Lee Jones's Ed Tom Bell from No Country for Old Men), though as it happens, Nick's story revolves very much around his devotion to Gatsby.
I'm really glad I had this opportunity to re-discover this film (I guess I should be even luckier that it's part of the mandatory English 12 curriculum!) because (and yes, I can admit this) I missed this film the first time around. It's far better than I ever gave it credit for and I can still admit that I am not looking forward to the new adaptation that's in the works. Hogwash.
Score: 8.5/10
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