Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby arrives with a $105 million net production budget, a 143-minute runtime and the full weight of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel behind it. It is a historical romantic drama, co-written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, and it is a mess — a loud, gorgeous, frequently misjudged one.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Leonardo DiCaprio and the Green Light
The film follows Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), who recounts his time in West Egg next to the mansion of Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mysterious millionaire who throws extravagant parties in the hope that Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) will walk through the door. DiCaprio is the film’s best asset. He plays Gatsby as a man holding a grin together with both hands, and the green light on the Buchanans’ dock is the one image Luhrmann trusts to carry real weight.
Then the film drowns it. Luhrmann’s camera never rests, and the party scenes are so thick with glitter that the loneliness underneath — the whole point — gets buried.
A Cast Doing Uneven Work
Maguire is a passive Nick, which is defensible for a narrator and dull for a lead. Mulligan gives Daisy a genuine ache, but Joel Edgerton’s Tom is a blunt instrument with no old-money charm to make the cruelty interesting. The supporting cast fares better on paper than on screen: Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson, Jason Clarke as her husband George, and Elizabeth Debicki as golfer Jordan Baker.
- Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby
- Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway
- Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan
- Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan
- Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson
- Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker
The frame story is the strangest choice. Nick, an alcoholic World War I veteran, tells the whole tale from a psychiatric hospital in December 1929, writing it down at his doctor’s suggestion. It is a device the novel never had, and it does not earn its place.
The Party Is the Problem
The film was polarizing among critics, drawing both praise and criticism for its visual style, direction, performances, soundtrack and its reading of the source material. Audiences were warmer. Fitzgerald’s granddaughter said: “Scott would have been proud.”
Scott would have been proud.
That is a generous verdict, and it is not one this review shares. The production design and costume work are genuinely excellent — the Academy agreed, awarding the film both of its nominated categories at the 86th Academy Awards. But design is not direction.
What the Money Buys
As of 2023, The Great Gatsby is Luhrmann’s highest-grossing film, with more than $353 million worldwide. That number says something about the marketing, the cast and the appetite for a familiar title. It does not say the film works.
The parts are all here: DiCaprio’s grin, the green light, the Valley of Ashes, Amitabh Bachchan’s Meyer Wolfsheim, the speakeasy lunch in Manhattan. What is missing is restraint. Luhrmann treats every scene as the climax, so nothing builds and nothing lands. The Great Gatsby is worth watching once for DiCaprio and the design, and it will not stay with you the way the novel does. 5.5 of 10.
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