Following a generous outburst of donated Orange Wednesday
tickets (many thanks to all who replied!) I went against all my principles and
instincts and went to see ‘The Great Gatsby’. On leaving the cinema, I felt
like I’d been slapped in the face with a sequinned, intoxicated fish by an
Australian gigolo. The music may have been banging but my analysis is not. It
wasn’t so bad as to make me raging mad at having spent my emergency beer fund
money but it will still pretty awful. I could have seen ‘The reluctant
fundamentalist’ for Christ’s sake! Although given the horrific events of
yesterday, maybe it wouldn’t have been the most appropriate choice…
Back to the beef! My main beef with the whole project is: it
just doesn’t work. I can see what Luhrmann was trying to do in adapting this
classic of American literature for the YouTube generation, but do we really
give a shit? It’s a cracking book, great story with phenomenal characters. In
other words, a gift and dream for those fortunate enough to be given the
opportunity to adapt it for the screen. The end result leaves one feeling like they’d
asked for fine French pastry and had been presented instead with cheap candy
floss: empty and thoroughly dissatisfied. The first hour and half of the film
is nothing but a bombardment of Disney-style fakery accompanied by wholly inappropriate
music, diminishing any sense of the time in which the book is set. The music
transforms the film into an incredibly elaborate and expensive fancy dress party,
saturated with clichés of this infamous period of decadent American history. The
extremely high quality of television offerings of a similar time period such as
‘Boardwalk Empire’ and ‘Mildred Pierce’, both dense, rich portrayals, makes
Gatsby seem even more bawdy and cheap than it already is.
The acting is decent
but nothing special, with the exception of Isla Fisher who brings Myrtle to
life with exceptional Technicolor vulgarity. ‘Home and Away’ was obviously just
an elaborate warm up for this role. DiCaprio is good but not great in this
role. He is mostly saved by the figure he cuts in the immense Brooks Brothers
suits. Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan are both spectacularly annoying – they don’t
ever seem to bring anything new to the screen. She’s always a mouse who can’t
string a sentence together and, when she does, ends up crying buckets. He is
wimpy and dull. Ugh, I’m getting fed-up and angry just thinking about it. Let’s
move on…
Cannes, Cannes, Cannes – can anybody get me ticket for next
year? If the line-up is anything like this year’s, I’m prepared to offer my
services as a red carpet cleaner just to peek through the great doors during
the films. Particularly looking forward to the release of Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘La
grande bellezza’, ‘Only God Firgives’ (come on, Kristin Scott Thomas as some
brassy American bitch in a blonde wig??? Deal breaker!!)...
...Alec Baldwin’s
documentary ‘Seduced and abandoned’ and James Grey’s ‘The Immigrant’. Grey is
never really talked about but his last film, ‘Two Lovers’, was truly brilliant - an unusual and deeply moving love story with
a fantastic cast which evoked a different side of New York family life. As for
Sorrentino, I would give my right arm to work with/for him so please, Paolo,
get in touch – I make a very decent pasta con piselli which could be adapted to
an industrial scale to feed the crew of your next project. Think about it.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many trailers/preview videos for
a lot of the “big boys” at Cannes but we
can expect tonnes of fascinating material to emerge in the forthcoming months –
so, Harvs – GET FINANCING B-CLAT!!
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