Baz Luhrman's Film Version Of 'The Great Gatsby'

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Recommended: Societal beliefs in The Great Gatsby

Giving Fitzgerald a Hollywood Look When a great American director decides to make a film adaptation of the great American writer or, to be completely honest, any world's famous writer, the community of bookworms gets uptight. In order to film a masterpiece, one should be a master of camera and scene, but even that is not a guarantee. Hollywood has its laws that not many filmmakers have dared to disobey, striving both for fame and financial success, and these laws do not always work for the sake of literary works and their authors. Baz Luhrman's version of “The Great Gatsby” is full of the 1920s glitter, luxury, and chic, but unfortunately, it failed to depict these years' darker sides, which most of Fitzgerald's fans love the novel for. “Great …show more content…

This is also disputable: he became a wealthy man with beautiful shirts and posh parties. In the movie, played by the outstanding Carey Mulligan, Daisy appears to be a soft and gentle creature, who is a sort of 1920's American Anna Karenina – a victim, suffering from the society's demands, and a prisoner of a broken marriage without love. She is depicted as the one who misses her youth, her chances to stay with Gatsby, her true love for him, which is socially forbidden as she is married. In the movie, Daisy is a heroine who cares and feels. Carey Mulligan's part was made more likeable, more sympathetic to make most of the people in the cinema hall pity her. At least up to some point, when everyone realizes she is not a saint: the scene where Daisy hits …show more content…

However, F.S. Fitzgerald describes a much more complex heroine in his book, whom he indeed did not want anyone to like. That is very clear almost from the beginning of the story owing to the author's descriptions, which are as important as the dialogues when it comes to Fitzgerald's prose. This image only deepens more and closer to the end of the book. In the 7th Chapter, when Gatsby and Nick visit the Buchanans and Daisy play with her daughter, she is depicted as a superficial and shallow woman, who takes absolutely no care in motherhood. To her, little Pam is yet just another attribute of the life a persona like Daisy needs to have. Thankfully, the girl was born beautiful and alike her mother: “She looks like me. She's got my hair and shape of face” (Fitzgerald, F. Scott and Matthew Joseph Bruccoli), which at least gives the child Daisy's benevolence and kind, rather than harsh words: “You absolute little dream.” However, the readers can only fantasize on how Daisy as mother and Pamela as a daughter could develop if there was a “Great Gatsby's” sequel (Koelb, Tadzio). Another peculiar scene, which has a romantic impression in the movie, but an entirely different meaning in the book is the one where Gatsby throws

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