Baz Luhrmann’s new version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic story — it was previously filmed in 1949 with Alan Ladd and 1974 with Robert Redford — is astonishingly visual, with glorious camera set-ups, color palates, slow-motion sequences and beautiful faces.  It is probably the most beautiful movie I’ve seen since Snow Falling on Cedars back in 1999.  Therefore, it’s a disappointment that the content of the movie is nowhere near as captivating.

I blame the movie’s blandness on two things.  It seems to me the script, co-written by Luhrmann, is overwritten.  So much is spelled out and explained and discussed that ambiguity is lost.  The script is pedantic rather than organic.  Normally I like things spelled out, but this is way too much; viewers can certainly follow the story and make their own value judgments without such tutelage.  Second, Luhrmann’s admittedly brilliant visuals lead to an artificiality, particularly involving the party sequences, that distance the viewer from the story.  Instead of being sucked into Gatsby’s garish opulence, narrator Carraway (and the audience) are pushed back by Luhrmann’s staging of events as a carnival.  Sure, Carraway has to stand apart to see Gatsby as he really is, but before Carraway can gain that perspective, he is supposed to enter that world as a participant, partake of its overindulgence and learn from the inside that it is a hollow existence.  He barely gets to do that in this movie.

Carraway is portrayed by baby-faced Tobey Maguire, who lacks the character depth to portray an insightful, “morbidly alcoholic” writer.  He seems like a dilettante in Gatsby’s world, never fitting in with the scheming adults.  Leonardo DiCaprio portrays the enigmatic Jay Gatsby with a mannered formality that is exactly right for his lack of authenticity.  DiCaprio is so handsome and so polished an actor that his presence simply overwhelms everyone else.  Carey Mulligan is Daisy Buchanan, and I didn’t care much for her performance.  I never saw anything that would lead Gatsby to pursue Daisy so long and so ardently.  Is this the way Daisy was written in the book? I don’t recall.  But in this movie Daisy is rather toneless.

A couple of important subplots involving Gatsby’s wealth and the love interest of Daisy’s husband Tom (Joel Edgerton) are brought in and kicked around, but the focus rarely leaves the triangle of Carraway, his cousin Daisy and the lonely Gatsby.  This is all right and proper, and yet the movie seems unbalanced somehow because of it. Baz Luhrmann is a gifted director, but he has stumbled here over the adaptation of an American classic.  None of the three movie versions of The Great Gatsby is a classic, although I have fond memories of Jack Clayton’s film in 1974.  Perhaps it is a novel that is immune to a top-notch movie adaptation; perhaps it needs a foreign-born director like Lasse Hallstrom or Ang Lee (yes, I know that Luhrmann is Australian) to give it a proper perspective.  All I know for sure is that as exciting a film as this one is to witness, it lacks the greatness to which it aspires.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  11 June 2013.