In theaters Friday: Aftershock, The Great Gatsby, Peeples
New on Blu-ray: Jack Reacher, Safe Haven
Oscar-nominated director Baz Luhrmann’s fifth feature film, and first in five years, arrives Friday. Here are five things you need to know about it, the latest adaptation (and first in 3D) of The Great Gatsby:
1. This is a story about greed and envy, and a man broken then reborn. Based on the acclaimed novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and told through the eyes of an empathetic, though outsider, narrator, the story revolves around a once-poor man who makes a fortune less than legally and remains desperate to reconnect with his lost love. It’s a damning, all-American transformation of self at any cost that sees Jay Gatz become “The Great Gatsby,” an alternately charismatic and mysteriously aloof one-man party machine on Long Island who wants nothing more than for a now-married woman named Daisy, who lives nearby, to take notice of this neighboring splendor and attend.
2. This is Luhrmann’s first time working with Leonardo DiCaprio since 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, the director’s first attempt at reworking a classic work in an ultra-modern, playfully irreverent and richly-detailed context. The early role helped a little known DiCaprio win the lead in Titanic, and the film was generally well received for its bold vision and arresting visuals, with a 71% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
3. The only thing stiff about the world of The Great Gatsby is the drink. Fitzgerald began writing his “Roaring Twenties,” old money vs. new money, East Egg vs. West Egg novel in 1922 after he and wife Zelda first began living on Long Island. A year later, Zelda wrote to a friend and described the never-ending nightlife there by saying that all the swimming pools and even the Sound reeked of gin, whiskey and beer. As for the novel itself, Fitzgerald’s characters knock down Mint Juleps and Sauterenes—on which Daisy gets “drunk as a monkey”—and a not insignificant portion of Champaign.
4. Yes, Jay-Z is on the soundtrack. So is his wife Beyonce, Florence + The Machine, Jack White, and the xx alongside more traditional Jazz Age choices like Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong. But Luhrmann, much like Quentin Tarantino, has successfully remixed modern music into an evocative period context before with his most accomplished work, 2001’s Moulin Rouge!, a mesmerizing and powerfully Shakespearian play-within-a-play drama that remains heads and heels above other modern musicals on film like Chicago and Nine. And, sorry H.O.V.A., but Bryan Ferry’s jazzed-up remake of “Love is the Drug” steals the show.
5. Luhrmann’s visual mastery plays right into Fitzgerald’s prose. Fitzgerald was nothing if not a colorful writer. Gatsby is saturated with cinematic descriptions of wild fashions and manicured gardens, confetti-filled parties, lavender taxis, Times Square at night, and that ominous green light Gatsby sees across the Sound, taunting him from the unknowable distance of the old money East Egg, a home he’ll never have.
The Great Gatsby opens wide Friday and co-stars Toby Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher. Watch the trailer below:
