'The Great Gatsby' review by Captain Raptor

'The Great Gatsby' review by Captain Raptor

After starring in a biopic about a troubled President, his future role in The Wolf of Wall Street, and now playing one of the most iconic roles in American literature, I've reached the conclusion that DiCaprio is now just picking rules that seem likely to earn him the Oscar which has notoriously eluded him these past years. The Great Gatsby is the film adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's classic story of love and materialism in post-war New York. As well as DiCaprio, the film also sees Tobey Maguire's return to the limelight after what could generously be described as a dry spell. 

 The most immediately striking thing about The Great Gatsby is the astounding visuals. A reappearing billboard with a huge picture of a leering pair of eyes has a brilliantly ominous tone, but it's the less subtle elements of the film's design and visuals that have the most effect. Sweeping shots of the New York skyline, fantastically fancy costumes and lavish party scenes with such an amalgamation of noise and movement; the lifestyle of the eponymous Mr Gatsby is perfectly presented. However, much like Gatsby's parties, all the glitz and glamour is a cover for a severe lack of emotion. In a film with a runtime of of 140 minutes, it's two hours before any characters show any dimensions to their brash facades and we can actually start to sympathize with them. The length may be what really kills the film: the book is under 200 pages and the story itself isn't particularly complicated, so the film is far longer than it needs to be, without engaging enough dialogue or characters to enjoyably pass the time between plot developments. It's a full 30-40 minutes before DiCaprio makes his first real appearance; the idea being to create an heir of mystery around the character which completely fails due to Leonardo DiCaprio's face being front and centre in all trailers and posters for the film. Tobey Maguire's innocent stockbroker Nick becomes a secondary character in his own story, which works in a book because the reader still gets his insights and description of events, but once Gatsby finally appears in the film, Nick quickly becomes bland and pointless, barely speaking or making his presence known upon the movie. Maguire actually gives quite a convincing performance, but his poorly characterized role starts to irritate once he is no longer needed as a window into the world of Gatsby. 

It probably goes without saying that DiCaprio gives a strong performance. As the sole interesting character, he has a ball as the confident and charismatic Gatsby during the party scenes, but it's the few scenes where we see Gatsby begin to crack that his talent really shines through. When he's allowed to convey Gatsby's anger or depression, DiCaprio really managed to captivate me, but too often the scenes are overly restrained and dull, with no showcase of emotion. A huge problem with the film's side characters is that they're all too balanced to actually enjoy. The nominally 'good' characters are either too flawed or too lacking in personality to root for, whereas the antagonists are portrayed too repulsively to obtain the audience's sympathy, but with enough rationalization they they can't entertain us as villains either. The music score is similarly caught awkwardly between two options: the soundtrack is an ill-fitting compilation of modern hip-hop and old-timey jazz, which suits neither the raucous, modernized party scenes nor the 1930's vibe of the rest of the film. 

It's a shame that an invigorating performance by DiCaprio and such stunning visuals are wasted on a film with such little life as this. An interesting story with one fantastic character is instead turned into an overly long experiment in tedium and poor storytelling with occasional flashes of brilliance. I'd like to see this film remade, still with DiCaprio in the lead, with a suiting runtime of 90 or so minutes, which skimps the exploration of the rest of the cast of non-characters to tell the darker, and less uncertain story of a truly great Gatsby.