The Warner Brothers remake of a literary classic is finally hitting the cinemas.
In this much anticipated film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, award-winning director Baz Luhrmann co-writes and directs, as Leonardo DiCaprio and Australia’s own Isla Fisher, star in what is set to be an all-time classic.
“This film’s vision and direction has all the makings of an epic experience.”
Some of you may know The Great Gatsby portrayed by Robert Redford in 1974. The dashing Redford brought new life to the old novel and stole the hearts of women all over.
However, it may be the book that you know best; after all it is the novel itself that is always the best teller of the story, or so they say. There is little doubt though, that with Luhrmann’s talent that this story will be anything but a sensational take on it, colourful and lively to the very last scene.
There has been a lot of positive buzz circulating about the film’s release. And in one recent media-drilling Luhrmann discussed the difficulties he and co-writer Craig Pearce had with adapting Fitzgerald’s novel, and hinted that the film’s script contains one major difference from its source material.
Widely acclaimed as a literary classic, The Great Gatsby captured the essence of an era, with the Modern Library naming it the second best English language novel of the 20th century.
The original story provided a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its compelling literary narrative, which is told through Nick Carraway, an aspiring stockbroker in 1920s’ New York.
Living on the outskirts of town, narrator Nick befriends his neighbour, the rich and enigmatic Gatsby who is famed for staging large, flamboyant parties for the region’s elite.
That era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, the flapper culture, and bootlegging and other criminal activity, is vividly depicted in Fitzgerald’s novel.
The author utilises these societal developments of the 1920s to build the Gatsby story, from simple details to broader themes, like Fitzgerald’s discreet allusions to the organised crime culture, which incidentally are the source of Gatsby’s fortune.
Fitzgerald educates his readers about the garish society of the Roaring Twenties by placing a timeless, relatable plotline, within the historical context of the era.
“Luhrmann… hinted that the film’s script contains one major difference from its source material”
Movie director Luhrmann reflects on this depth of detail within the novel by saying in Life+Times, “We know for a fact that if you read the whole book, or perform it, that it takes seven hours… so we had to make choices and we chose to stay very focused on the linear plot of the book.”
He went on to discuss the difficulty of adapting Carraway’s narrative perspective, “One of the big devices in the book is that the story is told from inside the mind of Nick Carraway … [he is] a watcher of and a participator in the story. In fact, in the novel, Fitzgerald very deftly alludes to the fact that Nick is writing a book about Jay Gatsby.
“So Craig [Pearce] and I were looking for a way that we could show, rather than just have disembodied voiceover throughout the whole film, Nick actually dealing with the writing, dealing with his experience of Gatsby, as he does in the novel.
“How we do really is the one big difference in the film. I won’t say how. I will let the audience discover that for themselves.”
The Great Gatsby was planned to be filmed in the New York City area, where the novel is set, starting in June 2011. The director instead opted to have the principal photography happen in Sydney.
Warner Bros Pictures, which is backing the film, said Luhrmann will “create his own distinctive visual interpretation of the classic story, bringing the period to life in a way that has never been seen before.
Music was crucial to making the film work. Luhrmann says that, “F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is peppered with contemporary music references specific to the story’s setting of 1922. While we acknowledge, as Fitzgerald phrased it, it’s the Jazz Age and this is the period represented on screen…[we also] want our viewers to feel the impact of modern-day music the way Fitzgerald did for the readers of his novel at the time of its publication.”
Music producer Lana Del Rey said : “The movie is highly glamorous and exciting; Rick Nowels and I were thrilled to write the song for the film. It’s ripe for experimentation and ready to be interpreted with a modern twist. The imagination Baz brought to Moulin Rouge made it a masterpiece, and Romeo and Juliet’s score wasn’t just in the background; the music became a character.”
Concluding, “This film’s vision and direction has all the makings of an epic experience.”
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