《了不起的盖茨比》

    Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke

    Director: Baz Luhrmann

    ANYONE who has seen director Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge” or “Romeo + Juliet” shouldn’t be asking if he would take liberties with an adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” but, rather, precisely how many liberties he’d take — and if they’d prove successful. The operatic, somewhat cheeky filmmaker latches onto the doomed love story at the heart of author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary classic, and his gift for melodramatic theatrics keeps this Jazz Age cautionary tale eye-popping. But because Luhrmann is always thirsting for the next grand gesture — the next emotional crescendo — the book’s subtlety and shading get trampled under his overblown aesthetic.

    Preserving the core plot and characters of Fitzgerald’s slim 1925 novel, this Great Gatsby differs from the book most notably in that aspiring writer Nick Carraway (Maguire) tells the story not to the reader but to a therapist, recounting the summer of 1922 in Long Island when he lived next door to a mysterious, charming millionaire named Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio) whose fortune’s origin is the subject of much debate amongst the New Yorkers who frequent his many fabulous parties.

    Carraway admires Gatsby, whom he regards as a fellow self-made man, unlike the husband of cousin Daisy Buchanan (Mulligan), Tom (Edgerton), an arrogant brute who is the heir to a wealthy family and enjoys taking many mistresses. Observing these individuals from the outside, Carraway finds himself drawn into their web when Gatsby has him arrange a surprise meeting with Daisy, with whom he had a passionate but brief love affair five years ago, long before she met and married Tom.

    Of Luhrmann’s previous films, “The Great Gatsby” probably most closely resembles “Moulin Rouge” with its mixture of flamboyant party scenes and overripe romantic intrigue. Working with several of his frequent collaborators — including cowriter Craig Pearce, production designer and costume designer Catherine Martin, and composer Craig Armstrong — the director has fashioned a striking period piece that emphasizes the 1920s’ freewheeling energy and boundless enthusiasm in the wake of an economic boom and World War I’s end, not to mention a strain of rebelliousness in response to Prohibition. As he’s done in the past, Luhrmann isn’t aiming to re-create a period precisely — rather, he wants to make a bustling, comic-book exaggeration that amplifies his audience’s collective impression of a bygone era.

    As a result, in the film Gatsby doesn’t simply have lavish soirees at his mansion: They’re filled with impossibly beautiful people all wearing the most incredibly wonderful outfits while anachronistic hip-hop and club music blares through the opulent rooms. It’s but one example in this Great Gatsby of how Luhrmann indulges his exuberance for oversized set pieces and spectacle. (In this regard, the 3D, though hardly essential, does add some visual oomph.)

    The most adversely affected is Carraway. Though the filmmakers have probably wisely decided to avoid wall-to-wall voiceover, which would have honored Carraway’s first-person narration in the book but might have become tiresome in a movie, “The Great Gatsby” essentially takes the character who’s meant to be our surrogate and sticks him on the sidelines. It also doesn’t help that Maguire seems to have been encouraged to play Carraway as a somewhat meek, ineffectual man, losing the book’s sharply wry and melancholy viewpoint in the process.

    DiCaprio fares far better as Gatsby, a poignant figure laid low by his desire to acquire enough riches to win back his true love. It’s been 17 years since DiCaprio appeared in Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” but you can see much of the last decade of his career in his portrayal of Gatsby: the thwarted ambition of Howard Hughes from “The Aviator,” the dark intensity of Teddy Daniels in “Shutter Island,” and the romantic anguish of Dom Cobb from “Inception.”

    Of late, DiCaprio seems drawn to roles where he plays dashing, confident, worldly men who cannot overcome some fatal flaw that threatens to undo everything they’ve accomplished. His Gatsby is very much cut from the same cloth, and while it’s largely affecting — now well into his thirties, he can better utilize his still-boyish face to wring great pathos — it’s also a touch familiar at this point.

    Because this film adaptation homes in on the love story between Gatsby and Daisy, it’s important that both leads suggest the agony of years spent apart from one another. But while Mulligan brings a coquettish spark to Daisy, she fails to convey the complexity of a woman who could bewitch a man so. Consequently, their exchanges come across as somewhat one-sided, but not in a way that seems intentional on Luhrmann’s part. Gatsby yearns for Daisy and has done desperate things to reunite with her, but we never quite understand what is so haunting about her.

    The movie is now being screened in Hong Kong.

    (SD-Agencies)