The Great Gatsby By Baz Luhrmann

The Great Gatsby is an interesting metaphor and reflection on the Gilded Age of America’s history. The novel stands as a foundation of American literature and as one of, if not the best of, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works. It is a complicated weave of relationships with additional ones created within the story. The story shows a lack of care for humans and their emotions in the 1920’s, a huge statement on the attitude of the time towards wealth and fortune growth.

The film The Great Gatsby (2013) incorporates brilliant mise-en-scene and the costume design is reminiscent of the 1920’s. The set design is consistent in the creation of the film’s atmosphere depicting a post WWI super wealthy in the “Jazz Age”. For example, the party scenes depict flappers and significantly wealthy characters, which pursue a superficial “American Dream”. As for Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), he obsesses his love for Daisy (Carey Mulligan) in his own illusory unreality. Additionally, the film depicts the 1920’s artistic styles in the Art Deco era. For example, the party scenes clearly have an Art Deco style and fair in décor, costumes, and diegetic music that creates the 20’s era mood in the atmosphere which accompanies the

The Great Gatsby is based upon wealth in the “Roaring 20’s”. The novel itself contains not a single dull moment of the narrators experience in the East, as it reflects people’s aspirations corrupted by greed and money. In addition, the romance between characters can help relate the readers to the novel. The film does a great job capturing almost all the aspects of the novel; through colors and themes. It gives the viewer a clear understanding of how shallow characters get mixed up into complex

There are many differences to be discovered between Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, and the movie directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013. Clearly, as time drastically changed between the two, it is easy to assume that some aspects of the story have as well. Scott Fitzgerald and Baz Luhrmann both captured the essence of the world in the 1920’s in different ways. These differences can be seen throughout the characters and themes of the story.

The USA in the 1920s is remembered as the ‘Roaring Twenties’, an age of new life, of hedonism and opportunity following the horrors the Great War. The decade is synonymous with wealth, materialism and unprecedented freedom. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby provides an insight into the exciting and prosperous lives of the American people as they embark on the limitless potential of the American Dream and therefore it conveys a picture of 1920s American society. With

“What is better, the book or movie?” a commonly asked question by many individuals who are curious to know one’s opinion on a novel or film he/she is interested in. The book is usually always better than the movie because the book is more detailed, one gets to know the characters better, and it allows one to be more creative and have his/her own interpretation on what is occurring. In this case, The Great Gatsby is a remarkable 1925 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was made into various movie adaptions in 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. Each version takes place in drastically different periods, so each type has its own take on the film, also depending on the director’s vision. This goes to show that the cinema has been trying periodically to recreate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, but the attempts of the movies have mostly failed. In particular, the 1974 film decreases its effectiveness in representing the message that Fitzgerald was attempting to demonstrate in the book, which contributes to the book being significantly better than the film for various reasons.

Movie adaptations are widely produced in our modern cinematic world. Many book lovers criticize movie adaptations, proclaiming that it kills the spirit of the story, misses out on critical key themes, and eliminates the reader's and viewer’s imagination. The Great Gatsby movie, directed by Baz Luhrmann and released on May 1st, 2013, is a film adaptation of the book The Great Gatsby, written in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The time lag between the movie and the book made some things unacceptable in our society. These changing societal proprietorship motivated Baz Luhrmann to alter the movie to be more suitable for current viewers. Consequently, there are many differences to be found between the book and the movie adaptation, which ultimately led to Luhrmann's movie being critiqued many times by the book’s fans, saying it was nothing like the actual book. Despite the fact that the movie adaptation of the Great Gatsby book follows the overall plot, it fails to show the racism, sexism, and abuse some of the characters withhold. The movie also fails to show the significance of the American dream, the condemnation of the lifestyle of the very rich, and it also annihilates reader’s imagination.

All too often the film industry takes a book and changes it for movie purposes. The resulting film, no matter how good or bad it may be as a stand alone, is inevitably criticized with those all too familiar words “The book was better.” However, The Great Gatsby has found itself within a group of the select few book based movies that has very few changes from the book at all. In fact, most of the lines the actors used were straight quotes from the book. A good majority of the characters, settings, words, and events in both the film and the book are identical,but not perfectly so. There are still a few things that must be changed either due to translation from page to screen or due to stylistic choice by the director.

Oftentimes when novels are adapted into movies, important details are excluded. Some movies however, manage to incorporate all the intricate details in the literary work. “The Great Gatsby”, directed by Baz Luhrmann, sadly does not accommodate all information, and slightly varies from the American classic on which it is based, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The screenplay differs from the book within the characters, Jordan Baker, Myrtle Wilson, and Jay Gatsby, and the inclusion of the mental health asylum.

“The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we 're descended from the Duke of Baccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather 's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.” (Pg.7) Nick Carraway narrates the whole story in The Great Gatsby,and here he makes a connection to 'The American Dream ' using his own family. In this quote the reader can see that his family is indeed wealthy, but often connect their wealth to some far off nobleman that may or may not have existed. Nick straightens this out by stating that the wealth is actually from his grandfather 's brother and his business, something that is continued by his own father and generates wealth through years of hard work. This is a good example of 'The American Dream ', but there are many other examples of this dream throughout the story, and each has it 's own meaning to the respective character. Gatsby has his own dream of achieving Daisy 's love, Daisy loves money and the attention that comes along with it, and George Wilson dreamed of having a normal family with his wife Myrtle. All three dreams vary because of who they belong to, but tangle together and cause problems throughout the plot of The Great Gatsby.

“So, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"- Nick Carraway, a famous quote that captures the harsh indictment in chasing the American dream. “The Great Gatsby” an original literary art form, has been adapted to film by director Baz Luhrmann. Both forms display different approaches at telling the story. Yet the novel written by the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald is proven to be superior. The characters of Daisy Buchanan and Gatsby are diluted and the historical message of the novel are changed in film thus creating a very lacklustre attempt at illustrating “The Great Gatsby”.

This 2012 Baz Luhrmann version of The Great Gatsby comes to life with its vibrancy and party-like spectacles. Baz Luhrmann does a miraculous job of creating a mood for the story, as well as having a knack for blending its contemporary jazz with modern hip hop music to add excitement to the movie.This 2012 The Great Gatsby follows along with the plot line of the original book better than the 1974 version, which makes it easier to comprehend background information.

A story that took place in the Roaring 20s, also known as the Jazz Age that demonstrated the revolutionary of America to be the country of today—music, fame, money, power and fashion. Nevertheless, in this era, how much will a man do to reach his dream and love, and how determinate can he be? A wonderful story with a tragedy ending, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the greatest American novels. Recently, having the chance to read the book and the opportunity to watch the 2013 film, I have noticed there are two differences between the two and they are the setting and the characterization.

“The Great Gatsby” movie is based on a well-known book by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, a well-known author that wrote American fiction. Maurer wrote that F. Scott Fitzgerald was known for his imagistic and wonderful composition. He could analyze the inclination of his era during a politically complex time of American History (Maurer, 2016). There have been a number of reincarnations of “The Great Gatsby” in cinematography. Baz Lurhmann, a popular director of all times recreated the movie and took the story to a whole new level. Baz Lurhmann has adapted the story and fit his visual style of production similar to other recognisable Lurhmann films such as Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet but he manages to preserve the core story.

The 2013 movie adaptation of ‘The Great Gatsby” certainly steps out of the cozy boundaries of the novella of less than two hundred pages by F. Scott Fitzegerald with its gaudy attitude and fast-paced scenes that at the same time is quite picturesque and full of details reproduced to match the prose that has been written. Some lovers of the classic might be horrified at the big top-esque film that Baz Luhrmann has made it into, for this director is no stranger to flashiness and taking risks, as shown in his past films “Moulin Rouge!” and “Romeo + Juliet”; and the same desire in the both of them is still present in his installment of “Gatsby”: the want to capture the contemporary audience, even if it