The Writer's Poke

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 throwi...

Martin Scorsese films are long -- 138 minutes on average -- and they keep getting longer from decade to decade. But he is one of the premier American film directors, so he has earned the right. This one was 151 minutes, and I had to watch it in two parts. In fact, it was so long, I ended up watching four other films before watching the second part. Not that I wasn't into the story. It's just one of those films with a slow build, and I didn't feel any need to rush through it. I think that's a characteristic of a good film -- the feeling that you can just sit with it for a while in silence. You don't feel the need to finish quickly or check the time left over and over again. The story itself is classic: What's good? What's evil? Who can you trust? And why do you think and act as you do? All great questions. For the most part, I assume that everyone is out for themselves in this film. Maybe they're working for a greater cause, maybe they're not, a...

Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) first met at some random party. They're both in their early twenties. She's an aspiring actress, and he's, well, we don't really know much about him. He's just a guy who works some random job. Later, we will learn that he had briefly been in the military and had seen Paris. At first, it's not clear why she would like him. She seems to have hopes and dreams. He, maybe he's just a conventional guy who will work a job, get married, and have a few kids. But what apparently attracts April to Frank is the fact that he had been to Paris, and when he talked of that experience, he was full of energy and life. Maybe April imagined that both of them were special, designed (or destined) to live extraordinary lives. Not just the typical lives of married couple with two kids in the suburbs. Clearly she wants him to want more to life, too, and she wants to feel what she first the first time they made love... she wants to f...