Killers of the Green Light
On F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and on Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby
This piece originally appeared in The Yale Review in 2013
‘‘When I was at Bennington some of the English teachers who pretended an indifference to Hollywood or its producers really hated it. Hated it way down deep as a threat to their existence.’’
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon
‘‘If anyone had told him these things were banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.’’
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Some years ago during a tour of the Breakers, the Vanderbilt summer cottage overlooking the Atlantic in Newport, an eagle- eyed woman in my group asked the tour guide why there were four taps in the bathtub. Because, the guide helpfully explained, the Vanderbilts, wishing to provide every amenity, gave their guests the option of hot-and-cold-running ocean water in their baths.
I’ve thought of those taps, Mammon’s triumph over Nature, whenever I’ve heard anyone complain that Baz Luhrmann’s new 3D version of The Great Gatsby is vulgar and showy and a desecration of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. What could be more vulgar, more ostentatious than piping the Atlantic directly into your john? Gatsby’s riches, unlike the Vanderbilts’, are new money, and because of that he’s looked down on by those who have always been able to take their boodle for granted. But if Gatsby’s romantic dream doesn’t succeed, his extravagances suggest that he knew at least how to have fun with his money, and Luhrmann, alive to spectacle and showmanship, is an inspired adapter of his story. The movie does not proceed with the crafted precision of the novel. But that precision has led some people to assume that Fitzgerald’s subject is as refined as his method, as if Gatsby’s lavish summer-night frolics were conducted with the quiet of an Edith Wharton country-house weekend. Luhrmann’s Gatsby is, as A. O. Scott (one of the more astute critics to have written on the film) noted in The New York Times, like a whirling opera: it’s mad and messy and crazy-making and wonderful and finally haunting, and the disapproval it has provoked has revealed that people harbor some fascinating, wrongheaded fantasies about Fitzgerald’s novel.
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