For the Love of Gatsby

BLAIR MAHONEY Rose-coloured Glasses Rose-coloured

For the Love of Gatsby Love the For Fidelity, Voyeurism and Baz Luhrmann’s Baz Luhrmann’s and Voyeurism Fidelity, 94 ISSUE 71 SCREEN EDUCATION ©ATOM 94 For the Love ofGatsby setting to amodernbut decaying American/Mexican version of of fidelityinhisadaptation ofShakespeare, asheupdated the Leonardo DiCaprio.There were similarconcerns aboutalack sic work ofliterature with of hiscareer, andhehaspreviously adapted anotherclas Luhrmann hasdeveloped adistinct visualstyle over thecourse in Fitzgerald’s writing. would lose sightofthemore intimate andthoughtfulmoments a lackoffidelityto thenovel andanemphasisonspectacle that and theuseof3D.Withthiscame concomitant concerns about anticipation following reports ofahugebudget,lavishsetdesign Baz Luhrmann’s 2013adaptation ofthenovel arrived with much between thecharacters. the cinematicadaptations, butfocused well ontherelationships American co-production couldn’t match theproduction design of and Paul RuddasNick.Withitsmodest budget,theBritish– and starred Toby Stephens asGatsby,Mira SorvinoasDaisy film ofTheGreat Gatsby (RobertMarkowitz) was made in2000, link between the films made twenty-five years apart. A television on to playMeyer Wolfsheim inthe1974film,providing acurious Howard DaSilva, whoplayed Wilsoninthisversion, later went etery twenty years after hisdeathandremembering thepast. (Macdonald Carey) standing byGatsby’s tombstone inacem of thenovel andfeatured theframing device ofNickCarraway This version wasbasedonOwen Davis’ 1926stage adaptation Nugent andstarred AlanLaddasGatsby,appeared in1949. The second adaptation ofthenovel, whichwasdirected byElliot T the end. portedly unimpressed withthefilm,leaving ascreening before trailer, whichcan beviewed online.Fitzgerald himselfwaspur and starring Warner Baxter as Gatsby,isnow lost butfor the was published.Thissilent movie, directed byHerbertBrenon the screen, withthefirst appearingjust ayear after thenovel Clayton’s film wasactually thethird adaptation ofthe novel for Gatsby could ever have fallen inlove withherinthefirst place. mance byMiaFarrow asDaisythatmadeviewers wonder how novel featured ascriptbyFrancis Ford Coppolaandaperfor tepid effort thatlargely managedto suckallofthelife outofthe Clayton’s 1974filmstarring RobertRedford asGatsby. This by filmmakers, withthebest-known adaptation beingJack Until now thenovel hasnotbeentremendously well served William Golding’s Lord of theFlies. rivalled only byJDSalinger’s taught novels inEnglishclassrooms around theworld, for educators –itisalsooneofthemost frequently because itisavery slender work –acardinal virtue only JamesJoyce’s monumental ‘100 Best Novels oftheTwentieth Century’,trailing number two ontheModernLibrary’s list ofthe one work thatcan live upto that,anditisranked ‘The Great American Novel’, ifthere can beany 1 leading contender for the title of Great Gatsby. Itisoften cited asa F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925novel or assecure intheircanonicity as here are few works thatare asrevered Romeo +Juliet (1996),alsostarring The Catcher and intheRye Ulysses. Largely The

- - - - impact ontheviewer. New methodsmust befound. use long voiceovers to replicate theeffect withoutlosing the the pagedoesnotwork onthescreen; Luhrmanncan’t simply perception oftheothercharacters andevents. Whatworks on first-person narrator, NickCarraway, whofilters thereader’s compounded withanovel like TheGreat Gatsby, whichhasa are necessary for theadaptation ofaplay. Thosedifficultiesare made inorder to transform narration into filmiclanguagethan material for thecinema,butmuchgreater changesneedto be purpose: performance. Novels have long beenusedassource for thescreen are notidentical, bothhave thesameultimate and adaptingaplay. Althoughwritingfor thestage and writing ily revolved around thedifferences between adaptinganovel didn’t exist inhisadaptation ofShakespeare. Theseprimar the director faced challenges inadaptingFitzgerald’s novel that soundtrack andkey scenes thatfocus onlarge-scale parties– (as RomeoandGatsby),theprominent useofamodernpop two literary adaptations –thecasting ofDiCaprioinalead role Although there are somesimilaritiesbetween Luhrmann’s adaptations asthe1968version directed byFranco Zeffirelli. English classrooms, taking preference over suchtraditional considered asuccess, however, andithasbecome astaple in soundtrack to punctuate the action. Luhrmann’s film was largely Verona where gunsreplaced swords, andincludedanup-to-date methods must befound. impact onthe viewer. New the effect withoutlosing the long voiceovers to replicate Luhrmann can’tsimplyuse does not work onthescreen; What works onthepage - 95 ISSUE 7071 SCREEN SCREEN EDUCATION EDUCATION ©ATOM ©ATOM FILM AS TEXT Nick the narrator Luhrmann and his co-writer, Craig Pearce, emphasise the idea of Nick as a writer in the film’s framing device. We are introduced Luhrmann expands the idea of Nick Carraway as a writer, and to Nick as a resident at the ‘Perkins Sanatorium’,4 where he is as the author of the (presumably nonfiction) book about this undergoing treatment for, among other things, depression and remarkable man Gatsby whom he lived next door to and whose alcoholism. There is only a slight suggestion in the novel that life he became embroiled in. In the opening pages of the novel, Nick suffers from any of these things: when describing the party Nick refers to ‘Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book,’2 in the apartment that Tom kept for Myrtle in New York, Nick says, but this is the only reference in the novel to the idea that Nick ‘I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was is an author, and that he has been in the process of writing this that afternoon’,5 but when he attends one of Gatsby’s parties for story. A few pages later, Nick mentions in passing that he ‘was the first time soon after, he admits that ‘I was on my way to get rather literary in college’ and wrote some ‘solemn and obvious roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment’,6 suggesting that editorials for the Yale News’,3 but Luhrmann expands on this to there is a degree of unreliability to his testimony. The sanato- have Nick (Tobey Maguire) and others refer to him as a writer. rium serves as part of Luhrmann’s strategy to conflate Nick So when in the film Tom (Joel Edgerton) introduces Myrtle (Isla with Fitzgerald himself, who did suffer from alcoholism and who Fisher), his mistress, he says, ‘Nick’s a writer’ – an introduction wrote of his mental fragility in his autobiographical essay collec- that is absent in the novel. tion, The Crack-Up. Thus Nick becomes Scott, the sensitive writer across thescreen. by sometimesprintingthem highlights their magnificence to justify theirinclusionand the sanatorium frame story narration, Luhrmannuses sentences that pepperNick’s the perfectly crafted for itsliterary effect on novel dependssomuch Because Fitzgerald’s a car fullofAfrican Americans withawhite chauffeur can simply example, Nick’s descriptionofhiswonder atbeingovertaken by pense withnarration whenevents speakfor themselves; so,for relies more on showing thanitdoesontelling, andcan dis ration that we get from Nick during parts of the film. The cinema literary originsofthestory andalsojustifies thevoiceover nar By framing hisstory inthisway,Luhrmannacknowledges the light into darkness andthecredits roll. the words ‘TheGreat’ above it,before we recede from thegreen reflecting onthetitle, whichjust reads ‘Gatsby’,hehandwrites laying itonto hispresumably complete manuscript.However, then seeNickremoving thetitle pagefrom histypewriter and against thecurrent, bornebackceaselessly into thepast’. typed onto thescreen over thegreen light:‘Sowe beaton,boats through therain, we seethefamous finallinesofthenovel last timeandwalksoutonto thepierto look atthegreen light the Midwest. WhenNickreturns to Gatsby’s mansionfor the disenchantment withtheEast thatprompts himto return to his disordered emotionalreaction to Gatsby’s deathandhis a result ofhisexperiences. Thejumble ofletters represents from this‘snowfall’ unshaven andapparently abroken manas mating asnowfall over thecityofNew York, andNickemerges of thefilm,where we seeaflurryoftypewritten letters approxi ration thatwe getinthefilm.Thisismost noticeable attheend small waytowards compensating for thereduced level ofnar a giving avisualrepresentationgoes ofthewriterthat atwork Luhrmann occasionally superimposesthewords over thescreen, to Nickathistypewriter inthesanatorium. Inadditionto this, of thenovel. From thispointoninthefilm,we cutseveral times Ashes, theremarkable descriptionofwhichbeginsChapter 2 to write about‘aplace’ prompts Nick’s memoryoftheValley of tells Nickto write down thestory ofGatsby,andhissuggestion The doctor (played byveteran Australian actor JackThompson) by theevents thathehaswitnessed. becomes akindoftherapy for themanwhohasbeendamaged who pours hissouloutonto thepage,andwritingofstory 7 - We

- - - out allrightattheend’. praise his‘extraordinary giftfor hope’andsaythathe‘turned thing for whichI have anunaffected scorn’, butthen goesonto the openingpageshetells usthatGatsby‘represented every him too, inthenovel, buthealsohasproblems withGatsby. In Essentially, Luhrmannjust loves Gatsbytoo much.Nickloves in emphasismeansthatsomeofthenovel’s ambiguity islost. ferent emphasisfrom thatofthesource text, andthischang Luhrmann’s diversions from thenovel reveal asomewhat dif Altering emphasis:Whatissogreat aboutGatsby? sometimes printingthemacross thescreen. to justify theirinclusionandhighlightsmagnificence by Nick’s narration, Luhrmannusesthesanatorium frame story its literary effect ontheperfectly crafted sentences thatpepper be shown. Butbecause Fitzgerald’s novel dependssomuchfor are introduced to Gatsby, fireworks explode allaround aswe get In Luhrmann’s film,however, the glamour dominates: whenwe the grimyunderbelly. repelled byGatsby–seduced bytheglamourbutsickened by the course ofthenovel. Heissimultaneously attracted to and the abilityto function’,andthisiswhatwe seeNickdoingover opposing ideasinthemindatsametime,andstill retain ‘The test ofafirst-rate intelligence istheabilityto holdtwo 8 , Fitzgerald InTheCrack-Up writes that - - 97 ISSUE 71 SCREEN EDUCATION ©ATOM a lingering close-up on his face with its winning smile. Although Nick does devote most of a paragraph in the novel to that ‘rare’ smile ‘with a quality of eternal reassurance in it’, he also describes the ‘point [at which] it vanished’ and how he is left speaking with someone ‘whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd’.9 Most tellingly, as Nick farewells Gatsby for the final time at the end of the film, Luhrmann shows us Nick calling back to Gatsby, just as he does in the novel, that ‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ and Gatsby is ‘worth the whole damn bunch put together’. In another line straight from the novel, Nick adds in voiceover, ‘I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him.’ In the novel, however, Nick adds: ‘because I disapproved of him from beginning to end’.10 Luhrmann doesn’t disapprove of Gatsby quite so much, so when his Nick adds the words ‘The Great’ in front of his name, there isn’t the same possibility that there could be irony in the appellation.

The viewer as voyeur

Cinema is entirely dependent on the act of viewing, as we sit and watch events unfold before our eyes on the screen. We become voyeurs as we peer into the lives of others, following the camera to see what goes on behind closed doors. Nick Carraway is also a voyeur, observing what goes on in his neigh- bour’s mansion, and giving us a distanced and critical viewpoint on the lives of Gatsby, Tom and Daisy (Carey Mulligan). In the novel, for the most part, we only see what Nick sees (although there are descriptions of events he doesn’t personally witness based on accounts he receives from others). Nick is therefore a watcher – an observer – just like we are in the cinema, and Luhrmann plays up this idea of watching others, making it a motif in the film.

The key scene for Luhrmann in terms of highlighting the voyeurism in the novel is the party in the New York apartment, where Nick observes that our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaust- ible variety of life.11

Luhrmann is so taken with this passage that he has Nick repeat his observation about being ‘within and without’ later in the film. In this scene, though, Luhrmann shows us a string of other apartment windows, each providing a vignette of other people’s lives, reminiscent of one of the greatest films about voyeurism, Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). He also shows Nick looking down on himself in the street looking up – a divided self that is justified by Nick’s drunken state at the time.

Luhrmann includes many other shots of people watching each other during the course of the film, usually through windows that serve to symbolically represent the barriers between people. Gatsby’s mansion and Nick’s house are depicted as being very close to each other, and the two characters watch each other on numerous occasions. In the novel, Gatsby is passions of others. observer of the grand of theneutral (andneutered) this returns Nickto therole between NickandJordan; developing relationship We don’tgetasenseof the Station’ the novel Nickwakes up‘onthelower level ofthePennsylvania Luhrmann emphasisesthiselement inthefilm–whereas in an observer rather thanaparticipantathisown parties,and to reserve alljudgements’ billboard. Nicksaysattheoutsetof novel thatheis‘inclined the film,Wilsonsays,‘Godsees everything’ advertising billboard intheValley ofAshes.Inboththenovel and through thesymbolismofTJEckleburg’s gianteyes onthe Watching hasalarge significance inthenovel itself,particularly neutered) observer ofthegrand passions ofothers. Nick andJordan; thisreturns Nickto therole oftheneutral (and so we don’tgeta sense ofthedeveloping relationship between filmmakers reduce therole ofJordan Baker (ElizabethDebicki), something ofaparticipantintheevents hedescribes,butthe going to just sitonthesidelines or‘playball’. Nickis,ofcourse, from the novel). Tom alsoasksNickinthisscene whetherhe’s other’s company before theothers arrive (anotherdeparture fortably listening to Tom andMyrtle very noisily enjoy each tells Nick,‘Iknow you like to watch’ after hehasbeenuncom scene thatcharacterise Nickasavoyeur, suchaswhenTom Luhrmann andPearce alsoaddlinesto theapartmentparty the distance between thetwo characters. takes uszoomingacross thebayseveral timesasifto minimise kinetic camerawork, partly employed to maximisethe3Deffect, green lightacross thewater thatsymbolisesher. Luhrmann’s course, Daisy,andwe seehimanumberoftimeswatching the The character thatGatsbyismost intent onwatching is,of ing me’. wake uponhisown porch andrealise that‘Gatsbywaswatch 12 after Tom’s partyinNew York, Luhrmannhashim 14 onotherpeople’s secrets, butthere 13 ashelooks atthe - - 99 ISSUE 71 SCREEN EDUCATION ©ATOM

16 Nick 15 Luhrmann allows for no such diminishment of Gatsby’s hopes no such diminishment of Gatsby’s for Luhrmann allows and hand picking up a receiver Daisy’s showing and dreams, see the Gatsby is shot. We before having the phone ring just discover, it is her, but we as he is convinced on his face smile the receiver subsequent shots of her hand replacing thanks to on the phone, that she decided and Nick speaking frantically of in his final surge all and Gatsby was deceived after call not to are we Gatsby being deceived, Luhrmann, despite hope. But for Nick reflecting rather uncomfortably on Gatsby’s shady path to shady path to on Gatsby’s uncomfortably rather Nick reflecting elegiac end on a more to Luhrmann prefers whereas wealth, Daisy. for love determined that emphasises Gatsby’s note death, Luhrmann departs from Gatsby’s showing In the scene that no telephone writes Fitzgerald significantly. the novel he was in the pool, and has Gatsby while for arrived message that Gatsby himself didn’t that he had ‘an idea Nick reflect cared’. and perhaps he no longer come, it would believe goes on to imagine Gatsby seeing a new vision of the world in vision of the world imagine Gatsby seeing a new goes on to poor where without being real, his final moments: ‘material, about’. fortuitously air, drifted like dreams breathing ghosts,

- Gatsby pose. This is most noticeable at the end of the film, with the noticeable pose. This is most death and the omission Myrtle’s after of events rearrangement turns father, in which Mr Gatz, Gatsby’s scene of the funeral of him us a glimpse his son. Luhrmann gives farewell up to earlier in the film during a flashback, but denies him a speaking has at the end of the novel his presence perhaps because role, adaptations, he cuts scenes and alters events to suit his pur to events and alters he cuts scenes adaptations, All things must come to an end to come All things must the keep to a number of cuts in order make adaptations Most Luhrmann’s running time, and despite a reasonable film to running time of any of the the longest film having by far is an implication that there is a higher power that is quite willing that is quite a higher power is that there is an implication Luhrmann on the things that it observes. judgement pass to gaze, with its penetrating use of the billboard frequent makes being after is run down: when Myrtle strikingly perhaps most the motion before in slow see her body falling we hit by the car gaze of the billboard. bespectacled

ISSUE 71 SCREEN EDUCATION ©ATOM 100 2 1 Endnotes Cambridge Press. University to thepromises oflife’ left withthefeeling thathewasfullofhis‘heightened sensitivity Reloaded andPoetry Remastered, both publishedby and istheauthorof Poetryat MelbourneHighSchool Blair Mahoney teaches English,literature andphilosophy would notleave usquite sosure. ott Fitzgerald, garet Daniel,‘WhatDidF. Scott Fitzgerald Thinkof p. 8. F Sc Anne Mar -1926_b_3024329.html›, accessed 30June2013. com/anne-margaret-daniel/the-great-gatsby-movie PostHuffington , 6April2013,‹http://www.huffingtonpost. The Great Gatsby, theMovie, in1926?HeWalked Out’,The The Great Gatsby , Penguin, London,2000, 17 rightuntiltheend,whereas Fitzgerald

• 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 ald, op.cit.,p.32.

ibid., p.49. ibid., p.8. ibid., p.44. Fitzger The nameisanallusiont ibid., p.10. ibid., p.172. for publishinghouseCharles Scribner’s Sons. work ofFitzgerald (aswell asErnest Hemingwayandothers) ibid., p.8. ibid., pp.153–4. ibid., p.153. ibid., p.7. ibid., p.152. ibid., p.40. ibid., p.37. ibid., pp.146–7. o Maxwell Perkins, whoedited the 101 ISSUE 71 SCREEN EDUCATION ©ATOM