The Great Gatsby

Some of what I like about Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby extravaganza is just the simple fact of a visualization of the characters, the settings, and the celebrated events of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. More substantially, Luhrmann deserves some special credit for staying true to an aspect of the novel that often gets neglected: Gatsby is the title character and the story’s “star,” but the narrator of the novel—young Nick Carraway—is more truly the central character here. His account of Gatsby’s fleeting “greatness” is a catalytic phase in the story of his own rise and fall. The cast is a good one—Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Carraway, Carey Mulligan as Gatsby’s dream girl, Daisy Buchanan, etc., but Luhrmann’s razzle-dazzle direction is so relentlessly attentive to flashy surfaces that none of the performances have much depth. Cinemark 14, Feather River Cinemas and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated PG-13.