NOT PYNCHON but The Great Gatsby

[Monte Davis]

R76> Baz's directing was entirely too complicated for my tastes, too,
detracting from Selling The Story.  Every shot was a technical effect, a
crosscut, a fade, a pan, a push, layered with CG, etc etc etc.

 

A comparison at random, just because I happened to catch L.A. Confidential
again on TV last night: the quiet, gemutlich late-night conversation in LAPD
Captain Smith's kitchen. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n61nZNycfBI

 

Coming into the scene you know that Smith (Cromwell) is bent - everyone in
the movie is -- but not exactly how, nor necessarily w/r/t the case Spacey
is working on. A lot of his role so far has been avuncular, "cops look out
for each other" stuff. There has been plenty of slam-bang action with
slam-bang cinematography, but this scene drops the floor from under you,
delivers a full dose of 'oh shit, things are darker and twistier than I
thought,' because Curtis Hanson trusts Ellroy's story and holds back on the
directorial tabasco. Luhrman has talent and energy to burn, but I've never
seen much evidence that he knows how to do that.

 

On  second thought, perhaps not that random a comparison, with Inherent Vice
coming to the screen. One reason I'm not enthusiastic about the book is that
for all its filtered and alluded and parodied noir, it never plays it
straight for power. Think about Pulp Fiction, also full of filtering and
allusion and parody, but with the straight-up noir of the Bruce Willis story
line too. If Anderson can pull off something like that, I may well like the
movie more than the book.            

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Rev'd Seventy-Six
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 12:34 AM
To: Andreis Passarinho; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: NOT PYNCHON but The Great Gatsby

 

@Passarinho:

Weirdly, all I could think during the final third is how much better suited
to Jay Gatsby Tobey was.

Unlike Rich I believe DiCaprio has ability & has featured in a couple of
top-notch dramas, but his range & skills have been pretty consistently
underutilized--  Scorcese / Tarantino notwithstanding.  In this case I
suspect he was cast as Gatsby because he had the name to make it a
top-grossing flick.  Per his acting, he did what he's known for doing,
including hair-trigger bouts of anger.  I wasn't impressed because I didn't
feel his performance suited a man doing his best to sell a Big Con:  the
lines poured out of Leo in a tumult like the worst kind of liar.  McGuire
would have been more reserved, I think, more capable of selling Jay's fibs.
But that's not the movie that got made, so.

Baz's directing was entirely too complicated for my tastes, too, detracting
from Selling The Story.  Every shot was a technical effect, a crosscut, a
fade, a pan, a push, layered with CG, etc etc etc.  Atop the hunchbacked
wedding cake of for-film framing device, narrative voiceover, overlapping
dialogue and hypercompensated soundtrack it was much too much.  It's as
though the GG was trying to live up to the legend of The Anachronistic
Director, but all it really did for me was highlight the overall artifice,
transforming it into yet another big budget film pornographically frosted
with 'production value'.  Some tales you can get away with everything being
in some way FX-driven, but Gatsby's story?  Not so much.  It gains nothing
from all the artifice.  Jay's success story (a lie) perverts & distorts his
death (robbing it of truth) in the same way the director's style keeps the
audience at a distance by continually reminding us that we're watching a
movie.  What are we supposed to have faith in here exactly?  Fitzgerald
didn't have to remind us god was watching.

I'm not asking for grim-and-gritty realism, mind.  Just, I dunno, maybe a
little more finesse.  But I knew what I was getting into when the first
trailer featured that screamo rendition of 'So Happy Together'.

'Strictly Ballroom' and 'Romeo & Juliet', I dug.  Still dig.  This... wasn't
made for me.  At least my girlfriend was happy with it.  She's more of a
Fitzgerald fan than I am, so maybe I'm missing something?

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