I watched the movie last night, and it did not disappoint. Aside from the powerful special effects that are strange but not annoying, the makers of the movie also offer their own reading of the great novel. Their reading seems to be that the narrator, Nick Carraway, is gay and hopelessly in love with Gatsby.
In order to support this reading, they change the plot in a variety of major ways. Nick’s semi-affair with Jordan is erased completely, Nick spends the better half of a decade after Gatsby’s death mourning his passing because – and this is an insistent motif- Carraway will never meet anybody as special as Gatsby ever again, both Nick and Gatsby are portrayed in a way that deprives them of all sexuality (which in the mainstream US entertainment is the most common way of hinting at homosexuality), etc. This is not my reading of the novel (enter “Great Gatsby” into the blog’s search engine to see mine) but I found it interesting.
The only real problem I saw in the movie was that the actors are a little too long in the tooth for their parts. Dicaprio works very hard to portray a much younger man and he isn’t half-bad but you can’t erase a 40-year-old face, body, and body language no matter how hard you try. Or at least not with DiCaprio’s degree of acting giftedness. The actress playing Daisy is not only very weak, but also has this extremely wrinkly neck that made all scenes where she was trying to portray youthful naivete quite clumsy.
Toby Maguire, the actor who plays Nick Carraway, has been forever typecast. A group of 50-year-old women in the audience yelled “Spiderman!” the moment he appeared on the screen. The actor didn’t help the viewers forget his most famous part as he kept adopting Spiderman’s trademark poses and facial expressions. The homoeroticism of the Spiderman series played into the queer reading of The Great Gatsby offered in the movie perfectly.
Overall, the movie is highly entertaining, a lot more comedic than the original novel, and curiously filmed. I recommend it as a good summer movie-going experience.
Clarissa's Blog 
Sounds promising. The last version I saw, I think with Robert Redford, can’t be too sure, seemed pretty contrived. They seemed to want to keep all the details in the book and it missed naturality. I’ll be watching it this weekend if it’s already released here in the UK, I’ve seen the posters so I assume it is.
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I haven’t seen the current movie, but it can’t be more boring than the 1974 version, where a very passive Robert Redford looked like he was posing for shirt commercials. The only entertaining scene in the entire film was when he finally got shot. (And if you think the current Daisy actress is bad, check out Mia Farrow’s interpretation.)
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Is that the same movie where Sam Waterston (the actor who played Jack McCoy on Law&Order) played Nick Carraway?
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You got it. Ironically, I was able to remember the names of all the major actors in that version (including Bruce Dern and Karen Black in supporting roles) except Waterston, until you mentioned him.
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He is all I retained from the movie. This means that you are right, the lead actors were not memorable. I can’t remember a single scene with them.
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Neither do I
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Not plannng on watching this one. One reason is that I’ve always found DiCaprio pretty non-compelling (apart from his role in Gilbert Grape).
He has a kind of babyface that doesn’t age well and means that now he’s almost always going to look (simultaneously) too young and too old.
Toby Maguire usually seems like he’s trying to act with his upper lip alone (not my line, but I think it’s apt).
Never heard of the Daisy but her imdb picture makes her look like a pudgy little debauched elf, not my idea of Daisy at all.
I’m also not crazy about reinterpretations that seem to be really divorced from the source material. I read the book many moons ago after seeing the Redord/Farrow version (not terrible but just kind of unmemorable).
Who would I cast? hmm I don’t see enough movies nowadays (concentrating instead of trashy tv)
Nick : tricky part since he doesn’t do that much IIRC, he’s a little like the michael york character in Cabaret, a camera. Needs to be engaging and verbally adept without being impressive in any way.
Gatsby : needs to simultaneously project a kind of bottled up charisma, restless energy and a stolid midwestern emotional blockage. The Brad Pitt of 20 years ago maybe, I’m also thinking Clive Owen (not sure why)
Daisy : Where Farrow failed IIRC was trying to bring emotional depth to a fundamentally self-absorbed and shallow character with no real redeeming qualities. Perhaps a younger Keira “ratmouth” Knightley? Maybe a better looking Kirstin Stewart (as the standard Stewart glum monotone could work very well).
Tom : Your basic asshole on a stick. Find a minimally attractive actor who can play “entitled sob” and you’re home.
Jordan : The only character I kind of liked, mostly because she doesn’t pretend to hany moral depth.
Myrtle : Okay I liked her too (isn’t she the female foil of Gatsby? She’s attempts social climbing through relationships and it also ends pretty badly)
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“One reason is that I’ve always found DiCaprio pretty non-compelling (apart from his role in Gilbert Grape). ”
– I agree completely! I really dislike this actor. I generally dislike everything that has touched Titanic. Brr….
“Tom : Your basic asshole on a stick. Find a minimally attractive actor who can play “entitled sob” and you’re home.”
– The actor playing Tom in this new version seems to be trying to get some Clark Gable thing going but is very unconvincing in that role. I agree that the role is not supposed to be hard at all, but this actor just looked fake and insecure in it.
“Myrtle : Okay I liked her too (isn’t she the female foil of Gatsby? She’s attempts social climbing through relationships and it also ends pretty badly)”
– I like this character, too. 🙂 And the actress who played her in the movie was making a lot of sense.
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He has a kind of babyface that doesn’t age well and means that now he’s almost always going to look (simultaneously) too young and too old
That seems perfect for the The Picture of Dorian Gray. Or a biopic of the current Abercrombie & Fitch CEO.
When I first read The Great Gatsby we skipped over the idea that Nick was gay or not straight. However, Nick’s glossing over Gatsby’s obvious flaws is inexplicable, really — considering he’s closer to the Buchanans socially and Daisy is a relative. I do remember that he and Jordan are involved and he has an “engagement” but there’s absolutely no emotional energy to this or the other quasi flirtation he mentions.
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http://jezebel.com/a-great-gatsby-book-report-by-a-kid-who-only-saw-the-mo-499342823
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The Spider Man series is “homoerotic”?
For a gay guy, I must be really bad at picking this stuff up. Straight people are always telling me things are gay in ways I never even thought of. 😛
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A profound engagement of the male protagonist with another man, the violence against his body that masks a different kind of involvement he wants to have with the loved / hated male, the competition for the affections of the same women as the only socially sanctioned way of joining his genitals to that of another man – these are all marks of homoeroticism.
It is still not easy to talk openly about queer desire in mainstream media, and historically it was downright impossible. So an entire language of talking about it in a veiled way was invented.
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I guess I’m just not trained to spot this language of homoeroticism. I’ll rewatch the Spider Man trilogy keeping in mind what you’ve said and see if anything turns me on. 😛
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