Gatsby Review: How old is the sport?

So old.

Old as balls.

Let me preface this with a disclaimer or two. I have seen The Great Gatsby exactly once. I saw it in 2D. I don't study film, I study literature. I haven't read Gatsby in a few years.

That being said, I walked out of the theatre with mixed feelings about the movie. The classic literature student in me wanted to rip everything apart, but the modernist in me wanted to post up a round of applause. I was stuck debating whether or not I wanted a more traditional Gatsby or a fully modernized Jay-G. I haven't decided yet.

So I'll take this in pieces. First, the soundtrack. At first I was very wary about the completely modern music choices, but the mix of the jazz age and today's R & B was actually very entertaining. The sequencing of the movie to the music fit very well. Now that isn't to say that the soundtrack was my favorite, but I can appreciate it for what it was.

The casting. While there are many literary criticisms suggesting that Gatsby is black and while I would have loved to see someone of a different ethnicity play Gatsby, I think DiCaprio did a good job. I wasn't fond of the casting of Nick, but honestly I don't like Nick anyway. I honestly wish there was more of Gatsby, mostly because I like DiCaprio's slightly awkward portrayal of the original symbol of the American dream. The Wolfsheim minor character portrayal was very interesting to me. He was a sleazy person and made me uncomfortable. I thought it was fitting.

The cinematography, however, was excellent. There were times, during the party scene, I felt just as drunk as the people there. And that was honestly sort of neat. I would really like to see the movie in 3D, because I realized in the 2D showing that there were a lot of scenes that were just meant to be in 3D. So I think that's the next thing on my to-do list.

But all in all, the movie acts as an idea present in the Gatsby novel: The old versus the new. The past versus the present. The soundtrack, the characterizations, the cinematography and the movie as a whole is simply an extension of that. The 1920s meets modernism. And while the movie didn't blow me away,  it certainly didn't disappoint me. It is a movie that can be appreciate for what it is and be enjoyed as a form of entertainment, not an object of criticism.

And while I would love to expand upon this, I need to finish my blogs for class. But feel free to hit me up sometime in person.