The Great Gatsby (2013 film)

directed by Baz Luhrmann
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, etc.
based on the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

REACTION: ★★★★  (Loved)

First thought as I left the theater: So much better than I remember the book being! I mean, I liked the book and all when I read it in high school, but the movie was impressive. Like I want to own it when it comes out on DVD, Blueray, illegal downloads, whatever. Yeah there were parts that were kind of cheesy (like the whole thing about Gatsby's smile, Nick's droning lead-in about Gatsby greatness/mystery, or the ridiculously windy white intro to Daisey). And I'm not too keen on using current pop music to soundtrack a movie set in the 1920s (I felt the same way about Shakespeare dialogue set in modern times with "Romeo and Juliet" but intentional mismatch on Luhrmann's part perhaps). And while Leo and Tobey were pretty perfect casting, the actress playing Daisey looks way younger than Leo to be a viable contemporary and really not exactly breathtaking enough for the role. But that's all petty nitpicks as the big picture here was something epic. The story arcs and cinematography alone kicked ass. Hit all the beats, plus quirky humor, and just perfect unfolding of events and characters. Takes you along for the ride with adorably awkward Nick as he witnesses the life, laughter, sorrow, wonder, illusions, and treachery of these people who at first captivated and later disgusted and inspired pity. Captured Fitzgerald's sentiment about the rich and their callous ways, leaving bodies in their wake and never having to bear responsibility for anything. Tom was obvious, we knew he was a jerk when we met him. But Daisey really sucks you in, especially that scene where she poignantly broke down after the shirt throwing on the bed. You could tell that she was genuinely moved by Gatsby's love (or obsession really), but just not quite enough it turns out. I'm glad this didn't play out as just some unrequited love story, because it's actually a story about devastatingly indestructible hope. Gatsby was a visionary (slightly delusional), and he made shit happen by whatever seedy means necessary to feed his legit and rather endearing motivations (Leo's always at his best when playing off balanced characters). Bittersweet how Nick was the only one who saw him for who he was and admired him for it. Such a beautiful ending, both visually and emotionally. I'm not sure how closely the movie really adhered to the details of the book since it's been awhile since I read it, but the whole discourse on East Egg vs. West Egg, Gatsby's "old sport" bit, and the billboard of the overlooking eyes were pretty much as I remembered. On a personal note, I loved the shots of the morning after one of Gatsby's bashes. Just the air of desolate abandonment you get when the party's over and everyone goes home and you see the messy remnants of what once was. That sense of melancholic calm and emptiness is so dear and magical to me, ever since I was a kid, I'm glad it was featured. Overall, awesome viewing experience that was artistically plucked out of pages from a book.


TRAILER:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera (1984)
~ original language: Czech




REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)

Perfect rendering of the imperfections of life and people. I felt like the book delves into pretty heavy, philosophical topics in such quirky and endearing ways. I appreciated the overall theme about how the weight and burden we think we have is nothing compared to the lightness we bear when we have to face the impermanence and insignificance of our lives. We can't handle absolute freedom. It's unbearable because we invariably want permanence and the realness that comes from weight and being bound to something. I liked that the author breaks from narrative to comment on the ongoing story and his process as a writer. It's like the book version of breaking the fourth wall. I also enjoyed the nonlinear structure where the story follows each character's point of view around and jumps back and forth in time. It's told in a way that's not hard to take in all of what's happening to everyone and really works for the story. So much symbolism in this book I can't even keep track. Sabina is hands-down my favorite character, just everything she represents. She may be the only one who could handle the lightness of being. Her entire relationship with Franz is made of win with its inevitable fail and Dictionary of Misunderstood Words. Then the irony of Franz being wholly misunderstood by Marie Clove in the same way he had misunderstood Sabina. Fascinating all the stuff the book goes into about the undertones of meaning in different languages for the word "compassion," lyrical vs. epic womanizer, the concept and theme of "kitsch," dividing people into four categories based on how and who we wish to be looked at by, etc. There's virtually nothing I disagreed with about this book.


QUOTES:

"If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness."

"The absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air...and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant."

"And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No, 'sketch' is not quite the word, because sketch is an outline for something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture."

"Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself."

"She yearned for the two of them to merge into a hermaphrodite. Then the other bodies would be their playthings."  [Tereza, about Tomas]

"On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth showing through."  [Sabina, about her paintings]

"It was a drunken carnival of hate... But no carnival can go on forever.  [Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia]

"A monument to time past... it was a recapitulation of time, a hymn to their common past, a sentimental summary of an unsentimental story that was disappearing in the distance."  [Sabina's bowler hat]

"Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had assume the correct attitude to her unchosen fate. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it."

"Characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about."

"The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own “I” ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. But enough. Let us return to Tomas."

"What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear--in other words, Communist kitsch."  [Sabina]

"Man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse."

"Man is as much a parasite on the cow as the tapeworm is on man"  [Tereza]

"Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

"Mankind's true moral test...consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy" 


MOVIE (1988):


I actually saw the movie before I read the book. And I have to say it's probably the most effective adaptation of this book into film that could be made, capturing the essence of the story without following exact narrative structure since to do so would be too confusing to watch. Of course, nothing compares to the book and it's not like one of my favorite movies or anything. But it resonated enough to make me want to read the book in the first place. That scene where Franz walks into the empty room was my favorite part.