The Great Gatsby 2013
Last night I saw the above trailer for the upcoming film version of “The Great Gatsby.”
When I heard Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan were cast to play in a new film version of the story, I was excited.
When I heard Baz Luhrmann was directing, most of the wind went out of my anticipatory sails. I enjoyed his “Romeo + Juliet” fine, but his 2008 “Australia” made me ill.
I have yet to see a great film made out of “The Great Gatsby.” It is a difficult task. Great directors have tried.
As with any tragic romance, the audience must first agree and believe a great love existed before they can be expected to feel tragic loss from a great love lost. And in Robert Redford’s famous 1974, I didn’t feel or understand how Redford’s Gatsby could have fallen so head over heels for Farrow’s Daisy Buchanan.
And therein lies one of the central challenges to creating a great “Gatsby” film – the audience has to understand why someone would fall hopelessly in love with Daisy Buchanan. Even the short novel doesn’t provide a depth of action or description for us to fully understand her draw and appeal. In the original novella, Fitzgerald’s legendary ability to use a few words to convey vast feelings and descriptions is relied upon to achieve this purpose, and many others.
After watching the above trailer, I still don’t expect Luhrmann will be up to this yet-to-be-achieved, epic challenge. But having said that, I think the trailer is perfect as a modern movie trailer. If in this modern age we can evaluate movie trailers simply as movie trailers, this is one of the best edited and graphically brilliant trailers I’ve had the pleasure to watch. I love the perfection of the short imageries, the integration of modern music, and the effective use of first person narrative voiceover. The trailer is soundtracked with, among other songs, an off-speed, up-tempo Jack White cover of U2′s Achtung Baby song “Love is Blindness.”
Whether or not the film will be good, the trailer is worthwhile.
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