Although I've seen bits and pieces of this version over the years, I've never sat down to watch it from beginning to end. What I've seen was enough. I just didn't like the over-stylization. Which is funny, because when DeCaprio did that MTV version of Romeo + Juliet (1996), I loved it.
Now that I've finally taken the time to watch this version, I've decided that I at least understand, at least in part, what they were going for here. Gatsby himself is a recreation, a reinvention. There is no "real" Gatsby. He's rendered in the imagination. The whole story is a fabrication, a fantasy, a dream. None of Gatsby is "real," and so why shouldn't his story be told as a CGI-enhanced fantasy?
It's interesting to note the few places where the film tones down the CGI and lets the set work in a more "realistic" way. One place is when Daisy and Gatsby are in his two-story dressing "closet." He's on the second floor throwing down shirt after shift onto Daisy, who is being covered on the couch/bed below. That was shot in a fairly realistic manner. The second "real"-looking scene I'll mention is when Gatsby tells Tom that Daisy never loved him. That she always loved him.
But yeah, the rest of the movie is an over-the-top live-action cartoon, but maybe there are creative reasons behind the vision... it still doesn't totally work for me, and as many other viewers have noted, maybe the worst part of the film is just the soundtrack. Keep it in the 1920s, please. For God's sake. Have some shame.
My real reason for wanting to watch this version is that The Great Gatsby is still one of the more popular novels being "taught" in high school, and it's likely that many students watch this version of the story, probably in place of reading the novel, and they might think that this is the story as Fitzgerald imagined it. That's sad.
Rating: 3/5 stars
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