Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘The Great Gatsby’
By Austin Lynch
I DON’T know if it is still on the curriculum for English but when I was at school one of the novels we studied was ‘The Great Gatsby’ by American author F Scott Fitzgerald.
Unlike the other work that was heavy going – Shakespeare and Chaucer to name but two – Fitzgerald’s work was fresh, exciting and had a great story to it.
It told a great story of wealth, excess, ambition, love and loneliness with very much the premise that ‘all that glitters isn’t gold’ behind much of the novel.
If you don’t know the story director Baz Luhrmann will introduce you to Jay Gatsby, a millionaire who lives outside New York and is famous for throwing the most lavish parties around.
For this latest big screen adaptation of the novel Luhrmann has chosen Leonardo DiCaprio for his Gatsby (a part once played by Robert Redford) while Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s neighbour is played by Tobey Maguire.
Nick comes to New York from the mid-west hoping to make a career as a stock broker in New York in the 1920s.
Knowing few in New York Nick becomes friendly with his cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton).
He also strikes up a friendship of sorts with his flamboyant neighbour Jay Gatsby, a man with seemingly endless wealth who lives in the mansion next door.
Nick brings Daisy along to one of Gatsby’s parties and is surprised to learn the pair had a relationship years before.
Gatsby is something of an enigma, someone nobody’s knows much about, and Nick quickly realises that he seems to know him better than any of those who attend his lavish parties.
Gatsby is still in love with Daisy, and her relationship with Tom is less than perfect and Nick is caught right in the middle.
When casting for this film, which was due to be released months ago, DiCaprio was the first name which came to Luhrmann’s mind, and possibly one of only a few actors who could carry the role off.
Maguire might also be a good choice as Nick, although we do have to listen to Maguire’s voiceover right the way through this movie.
‘The Great Gatsby’ is a very lavish performance – and full of the sort of excess that you would expect from the ‘roaring twenties’ in somewhere like New York.
Like all adaptations the film takes its own poetic licence so fans of the novel (like me) may not come away totally happy with how the story twists and turns.
But this is still a big movie with a decent story at its heart. Will Daisy and Gatsby end up together, or will love tear them apart – and destroy their lives.