It may just have been that the book The Great Gatsby was never meant to be made into a movie, but, regardless, The Great Gatsby (2000) was the epitome of failed movies from books. Personally, I saw too many problems with the reliance on narration, the choppiness, the portrayal of the characters, and the terrible usage of “artistic license”. Overall, my biggest problem with the movie was the paucity of class distinction.
The basis of the book itself is a clear class distinction between the various characters. Nick is supposed to be of the “new money”, not to mention the fact that he worked for his money, as a bond salesman, as opposed to inheriting it. This, in the book, is put in clear contrast to Jay Gatsby. Gatsby has mysterious origins of his wealth, and the reader finds out that he is a bootlegger, rising from his humble youth. The problem with the movie becomes that these two characters are not portrayed by any notable differences in class. At no point does the movie establish the grandeur of Gatsby’s residence versus that of Nick’s. There is also a lack of class distinction between Tom and Nick. Tom is a member of East Egg, which means that he is based off of “old money”. Also, Tom is supposed to be portrayed as of a higher social class than Nick. However, Nick and Tom wear the exact same wardrobe in the dinner party at the beginning of the movie.
Despite the problems with the lack of class distinction, the movie still has the possibility to retain some entertainment value. Yet, the movie fails at providing the watcher entertainment on the grounds of its choppiness and dependency on unoriginal narration. The movie provides no transition from scene to scene, which leaves viewers piecing together left-out parts of the plot. The viewer should never have figure out basic aspects of the plot, instead the movie should always relay that to the viewer. In addition, the movie’s reliance on narration to describe the setting is disgusting. In the opening scene, at the valley of ashes, and the character Myrtle all need to be explained by Nick’s narration. If this movie really wanted to stand out, the movie should have made all these points clear without narration. I’m not a director, so I couldn’t say how to do it, but I do understand that it needed to be done. Moreover, the worst part about the narration was that it was completely unoriginal. All the narration was taken word for word from the book. Although I understand the concept of originalists, the movie needs something to distance it from the book a little more.
The casting of characters tended to be very “hit and miss”. I found a problem with Daisy’s lack of emotional expression to really portray what was going on. Without it, the viewer has to once again infer what is going on in her mind. On the other hand, I found that Jordan’s character was perfectly casted for her role. Jordan is supposed to be representative of the era and the mysterious ways her character is portrayed does that very well.
All in all, if your looking for a movie to see this weekend, look elsewhere. This movie is riddled with problems in portraying the simplest of actions. The movie over-extenuated parts of the movie that should have been more subtle, and the movie left out such key parts of the plot. If you are going to see a movie version of The Great Gatsby , go and watch the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby because that version fixes all the aforementioned problems.
1.5 STARS OUT OF 4
