First 'Great Gatsby' Trailer Confuses, Enlightens

I will definitely go and see this. The Great Gatsby is probably my favorite book, and if not number one is surely in my top three favorites. I think modernizing the film a bit is great. A book does not come with a soundtrack and it does not (usually) contain pictures. That is the absolute beauty of a book, it is meant for an imagination. So, this director imagined the book as something more modern. It is likely that when you, a reader, read the book in high school that you were hearing what was the hip and popular party music of your time, you were picturing Gatsby as your ideal misunderstood handsome bachelor. His home was your ideal mansion. 

Also, the story is about a time of extravagance and carelessness... and it's a love story. There's much more to it than that, but we can easily break it down into ultimately these two things. There is a mood to this book and it looks as though Luhrmann put that onto film splendidly. 

So, for all you purists who wish to have swinging jazz and scenes transcribed directly from a book, a leading actor not easily recognized as a romantic lead, you can read the book to have all those things. I would highly suggest doing so as well.  However, if you want a modern translation that will bring the excitement of the book to a new generation and get high school students to appreciate a timeless novel (even if it's just a movie) then by all means go see the film and appreciate it for what it will potentially be. 

First - I am soo completely in love with this book, and with the original film, which was SOO subtle yet intensely true to the book, that it really feels almost sacriligious to create another version. Yet, I'm intrigued.

2 - While fun to see the spectacle that modern film-making can create with respect to the lavishness of the setting of this story, its not really necessary. Yes, a fun feast for the eyes, but is it necessary? It was conveyed terrifically in the original. And honestly, the scene that rang the truest to me in the trailer was the violence with Tom Buchanan's mistress's husband, a dark, relatively very simple, ugly setting in the film. Not glittery at all.

3 - At least in this trailer, all of the actors' performances seemed weak in comparison to the originals (we're talking about Redford! Mia Farrow!, and the actor who played Tom Buchanan and the actress who played his mistress were spellbinding); Felt this about all of the actors, WITH the exception of Leonardo. He grips me. The others appear just to be known actors playing characters. Leo's got the affectations and the emotion absolutely right, from what I can see in these glimpses, and I believe him. Except, having Redford's performance already burned on my brain, I can't yet tell whether Leo is performing Jay Gatsby perfectly, or performing Robert Redford performing Jay Gatsby perfectly.. and that could be an important difference, and potentially significant loss of of an opportunity to force us to reckon with a new interpretation that's just as good, or even better. Too soon to tell.

4 - LOVE hearing Jack White's cover of "Love is Blindness" in the trailer - chilling. But I hope that the actual film is at least partially true to the music of the era, since it is FABULOUS, and could introduce a new generation to an amazing genre. And yes, while it can be terrifically cool and stylish to utlize modern music over a period piece (Sophia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" comes to mind as a wickedly wonderful example of that working, and yes "Romeo & Juliet" was awesome too). But we are talking about the Jazz Age here people - music is as large a character of that time as anything, and to ignore it, just to pull in some younger people who will buy a soundtrack if its got Beck and Bat for Lashes on it, diminishes the opportunity to really embrace something.