I get the feeling most people view The Great Gatsby, of which they remember the title, the author, a few lines, and not much else, through the lens of their childhood, something Important, in black and white, like an old photograph. Thus it’s jarring to see it brought to life looking like someone put a rainstick, a disco ball, some tinsel, three of your tacky aunt Edna’s animal-print shawls, and the Chrysler Building into that machine from The Fly. And in 3D, no less! With dub-step, and Black Eyed Peas songs! (*hikes flapper skirt above knees, does the Charleston while background dancers twirl spiral-patterned umbrellas*)
The wild thing about The Great Gatsby is that the sacrilege is the best part. It takes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mannered, elegant prose and turns it into a world where it’s always raining ticker tape and tinsel and confetti and shit, and no one notices because they’re too busy laughing and screaming and dancing and billowing billowing billowing about the room while seductive negroes play the trumpet. Imagine stumbling through a menagerie of art deco grotesques like Hunter Thompson inside Circus Circus in the depths of an ether binge and you won’t be far off. Hey, it’s supposed to be about decadence, right? And who does decadence better than Baz freakin’ Luhrmann? Excess tried to hang with Baz one day and spent the entire afternoon puking rainbows into the chocolate fountain.
