The Great Gatsby (M). Director: Baz Luhrmann. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton. 142 minutes
Towards the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, one of the novel's more hapless characters, mechanic George Wilson, peers out his window at the industrial wasteland that he calls home (described uncharitably by the narrator as 'the ashheaps') and reflects upon his life's ill fortune. 'God sees everything,' he mutters. Ominous words, but the scene's real power comes from the revelation that the object of his utterance is not some distant, benign power, but the monstrous glasses and eyes that adorn a decrepit billboard that looms over the scene.
The billboard has been described in earlier pages, but here its thematic significance is driven home with an elegance that is typical of the novel. In the 1920s New York society of Gatsby, money is God: benevolent to some; laying waste to the lives of others. 'God' in this context could equally be taken to mean substance or meaning, which in the lives of the characters of Fitgerald's novel have been usurped by the divine dollar.
'The eyes of Dr T. J. Eclkleburg' are in Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation too. But Luhrmann, co-screenwriter as well as director of this latest cinematic adaptation of the classic novel, doesn't do subtlety when cheap theatrics will suffice. The first time he shows us the billboard, he has the film's narrator (and not-so-innocent bystander to its tragic events) Nick Carraway (Maguire) effuse that the billboard watching over the ashheaps resembles 'the eyes of God!' The aforementioned scene with George is thus rendered obsolete and is all but absent from the film.
It's hard to know if Luhrmann has deliberately dumbed down Fitzgerald's text in order to appeal more readily to a mass market (early box office results would suggest he has achieved that much, despite the film's critical panning) or if he has simply missed the subtleties of the novel that contain so much of its power. He is foremost a showman, and as spectacle his Gatsby can hardly be faulted. Never has the extravagance of the enigmatic Gatsby's (played here by DiCaprio) parties and lifestyle been rendered so dazzlingly. If cinema was a medium to excite the eyes and ears while relaxing the brain, Luhrmann would be a true master of the craft.
That may not be entirely fair. The casting of the film does suggest some appreciation for the