In Search of a Soul

3D salvages; it is a saviour. I can put my money on why The Great Gatsby would have never been so impactful, if it weren't for the three dimensional effect. Set in the 1920s, Scott Fitzgerald's magnum opus would have remained a trivial mediocre celluloid piece, lost in translation, had it not been for 3D...Why? Reasons are aplenty. 

To give the movie its due, Di Caprio takes complete ownership of the character that Fitzgerald wrote many decades ago... an era when people waited for the love of their lives, singing, dreaming, drinking and also dying... Gatsby lives the archetype to the last word. Our own Sharat Chandra's Devdas (written around the same point of time) was another case of lost in love....a romantic who influenced generations of cinegoers into believing that love is to be coveted and conquered, if not, you don't move on, fools, but realize (or drink) your way to self-destruction- your self being the sacrifice for unrequited love- love that is under tight leash, wilting under the demands of an unrelenting society...Haven't we moved on long since? So much so, that we have forgotten to sink ourselves into suspended disbelief of another time...so, 3D saves...

The portrayals of the lead players - a woman (Cary Mulligan as Daisy) so bound by the rules of her time, a chauvinist, womanizing husband and a lover who has waited five years to reclaim the woman of his dreams, despite knowing she s now married to a wealthy philanderer, and a mother of a child...all believable characters, yet so vague and distant.... we wouldn't know why Daisy Buchanan was so meek and submissive, so cowardly and utterly lacking in substance unless we know the society that existed then; we wouldn't for the lives of us be able to fathom how Gatsby came by such huge amounts of wealth in a matter of just five years unless we know our history lessons well and understand the 1920s America and the ways of profiteering and carpetbagging that went on then; a time when the likes of Joe Kennedy were making copious amounts of money, through alleged bootlegging. Gatsby's relationship with Meyer Wolfshiem gives hints of the means of the ill gotten wealth, but then so many undertones and subtexts tend to overwhelm an audience that needs to go back and get its history quotient in place. For the Indian audience, watching the Big B in an international production doesn't produce the kind of thrill that one went to the theaters for, though Bachan couldn't have asked for a better launch pad for his first Hollywood outing. And then, the end. So predictable, so tragic as expected that one would have protested indignantly, had it ended differently. Such were the cliches of Fitzgerald's times.

So, what scores? The music. Hands down. A blend of the classic with contemporary sounds - a melange of rap, jazz and pop that takes you by pleasant surprise. The grandeur of Gatsby's lavish lifestyle comes alive with the music. Am not sure if Fitzgerald would have appreciated these cinematic liberties that tamper with classic sensibilities. But then, what I would want to console him with is this: Your masterpiece would have been reduced to an insignificant 'has-been', if not for these deviations and yes, of course, the visual splendor that is generated while showing Gatsby's hedonistic parties. 

So, all in all, Baz Lurhmann's Gatsby remains a grand spectacle good in parts, but, with little or no depth, in search of a soul.