The Great Gatsby (2013)

[Michael Gary Scott]

I thought it was Tobey best performance in years

[rockNrollaDIM]

All you Tobey fans.

 

[Michael Gary Scott]

All you Tobey fans.

 

I was skeptical going in but I give him props

[fishstick]

Tobey was good especially when playing off Leo. Their off screen freindship seeps through really nicely.

[mattmav45]

Yeah, I'm not a Tobey fan but he's good in this, IMO.

[ecstasy]

Saw it last night and I absolutely loved it! Watched in 3d.  I thought Baz did a great job capturing the essence of the story. Wardrobe and makeup and hair should get an award, lol.  Loved the clothes, mansions, furniture. He got a lot of these details right. It was visual treat.

 

 

Wow just wow. I don't know he did it but the contemporary music was placed well. Nothing blaring or in your face and I loved the subtle version of love got me going crazy.

 

 

All of the actors did a fine job, imo. I especially liked Joel and Tobey in their roles. I had real doubts about Tobey but he was perfect for the role of Nick. At first I thought he would be too goofy but he embodied the moral center as intended by the author. Nick saw things clearly. Simple principle. All that glitters is not gold.

 

 

Carey Mulligan was a good Daisy I thought. I liked how delicate she seemed. Baz succeeded in making Daisy almost sympathetic.

 

 

Leo what an actor. He was Jay Gatsby. I thought his acting was a little forced in the beginning but he quickly settled into the role and was clicking on all cylanders by the time of the big confrontation. 

 

 

Kudos to all involved.

 

"A"

[Webslinger]

The one thing that very seriously disappoints me about this adaptation is how little screen time Jordan Baker gets. In the book, she's Nick's love interest, she relays vital expository information, and her carelessness (specifically, her terrible driving) serves as clear foreshadowing of what's to come. Her well-documented instances of cheating in golf tournaments and getting away with it also act to illustrate in a small but still very cynical sense that people with enough wealth and enough clout can get away with anything (as we see in a much larger sense with Tom and Daisy at the end). Also, the relatively calm nature of the relationship between Jordan and Nick is meant to contrast with the more complicated and/or adulterous relationships the other characters have. And one of her last lines - "Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I?" - is meant to indicate that Nick, while much less detestable than all the other major characters in the novel, is not without his own faults.

 

But in this movie, only the expository function of the role remains. And given what a good job Elizabeth Debicki does with her screen time, it's a shame.

[Plain Old Tele]

I'll take that as true (haven't read the book), but at 2 hrs 20 minutes, what should give to make room?

[RichWS]

Jordan got the shaft but I'm not sure they made the wrong move. I thought it could have lost another 10 minutes.

[ecstasy]

The one thing that very seriously disappoints me about this adaptation is how little screen time Jordan Baker gets. In the book, she's Nick's love interest, she relays vital expository information, and her carelessness (specifically, her terrible driving) serves as clear foreshadowing of what's to come. Her well-documented instances of cheating in golf tournaments and getting away with it also act to illustrate in a small but still very cynical sense that people with enough wealth and enough clout can get away with anything (as we see in a much larger sense with Tom and Daisy at the end). Also, the relatively calm nature of the relationship between Jordan and Nick is meant to contrast with the more complicated and/or adulterous relationships the other characters have. And one of her last lines - "Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I?" - is meant to indicate that Nick, while much less detestable than all the other major characters in the novel, is not without his own faults.

 

But in this movie, only the expository function of the role remains. And given what a good job Elizabeth Debicki does with her screen time, it's a shame.

 

I think that part was in the movie I saw with Mira Sorvino as Daisy.  Funny I can't even remember who played Nick in that one. Oh man, I just checked IMDB. It was Paul Rudd, lol.

Edited May 18, 2013 by ECSTASY

[fishstick]

 

 

Leo what an actor. He was Jay Gatsby. I thought his acting was a little forced in the beginning but he quickly settled into the role and was clicking on all cylanders by the time of the big confrontation. 

 

 

I think that Jay needed to be forced at the beginning because he wasn`t sure what to make of Carraway while desperately needing his help while trying not to look desperate. Leo`s the king of onion peel characters.

 

 

Jordan got the shaft but I'm not sure they made the wrong move. I thought it could have lost another 10 minutes.

 

Yep, movies simply can`t susptain everything that`s in a book and have to be steamlined. So I agree that the decision was valid. The title is TGG so focus on Gatsby, show us why he was Great, rather than cover Gatsby and the gang.

[CJohn]

Saw it today in 2D. It was ok. Nothing special. Didn't get the point of the story, but yeah. Was this supposed for us to understand Daisy was a shit woman and Gatsby spend the whole time doing everything to have her back? Leo was great, as always. A disappointment since I had high expectations after the last trailer.

Edited May 20, 2013 by CJohn

[Webslinger]

I'll take that as true (haven't read the book), but at 2 hrs 20 minutes, what should give to make room?

 

I'd get rid of the framing device. I didn't think Nick's being in a sanitarium did anything significant on a thematic level, and we don't need to know where or when he's narrating from.

[The Futurist]

I know now what inspired Stéphanie Meyer and Twilight.

[narniadis]

While it did skims some parts of the book (his backstory in particular) I felt it wa a pretty decent take on the material. It do start to drag about the hour and a half mark but only because I knew how it would end. Solid B

[Ezen Baklattan]

Was this supposed for us to understand Daisy was a shit woman and Gatsby spend the whole time doing everything to have her back? Leo was great, as always. 

 

In a sense. Daisy is rather symbolic of the Jazz age as a whole. Beautiful and wonderful on the outside, but the truth of Daisy is that she's shallow on the inside. Although she did love Gatsby, she still had Tom Buchanan. Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy is essentially him trying to restore the glorious past that Gatsby and Daisy had, and Gatsby becomes hopelessly obsessed with the past, leading to his ultimate downfall. Gatsby was one of the greatest tragic characters in literate history because the thing he was trying to chase down to the point where it kills him. The question is, was she truly worth all of the effort that Gatsby put into being with her again.

[riczhang]

I'd get rid of the framing device. I didn't think Nick's being in a sanitarium did anything significant on a thematic level, and we don't need to know where or when he's narrating from.

I think the framing device was genius actually. The story looses a lot of depth when you take out the narration, but to keep it in there would have to be a reason. We know Nick is writing Gatsby as a book because it says so in the book, and Fitzgerald has had his narrators narrate from inside a Samitarium. Putting 2 and 2 together was sheer genius.

[CoolioD1]

Awesome. Loved pretty much everything..

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

The framing device didn't take me out of the movie but it doesn't really make sense according to what happened unless Nick has the most fragile constitution ever. He got drunk a few times but was presented as pretty together mentally. Of course it sucks that his new BFF got murdered and his cousin is a flighty, selfish bint and he's disillusioned with the trappings of wealth, but that sent him to a sanitarium because? Like, if this were in contemporary times and Nick were an actual minor celebrity caught up in a Hollywood party scene murder scandal, then a trip to "rehab" to salvage his image would be a good PR move. Also, if they had really really played it that Nick had a thing for Gatsby, then him having a meltdown after everything that happened would have worked, too (were they playing up the "Nick wants Gatsby" angle here? They deleted his actual romance from the book, but that could have just been because they thought Tobey and Elizabeth Debicki would look ridiculous together). But Nick's in the 1920s, he's not really one of the idle rich at heart, people like that didn't just go off for "rests" unless their issues were too obvious to ignore by the standards of the day.

 

I've seen four versions of TGG (1949, 1974, 2000 TV version with Paul Rudd as Nick and Mira Sorvino as Daisy the long-haired!!! flapper, and 2013). There's an "urban" version called G I really want to check out.

[Gopher]

He got drunk a few times but was presented as pretty together mentally.

 

We see him lie in his narration (in the book and the film) about how much he drinks. And we see him drinking a lot in the movie. Given his state after Gatsby's death and the character's self-awareness in general, I totally buy that he would commit himself to a sanitarium.