Film Analysis Of Leonardo Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby takes place during the 1920s in Long Island and New York City. The story is narrated by a man named Nick Carraway and is oriented around the love between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. To put it briefly, Gatsby left Daisy to fight in WW1 in order to seek a name for himself and wealth for Daisy. However, when he returned, Daisy married a man named Tom Buchanan leading Gatsby into holding extravagant and chaotic parties to grab Daisy’s attention. Shortly after, Daisy’s second cousin, Nick Carraway, reconnects them together after five years. The novel has a theme of the American Dream during the 1920s with Daisy as Gatsby’s dream. However, when analyzing the story on a deeper scale, Gatsby gradually sees Daisy as a goal to become rather than to have and love. Considering the plot changes, Baz Luhrmann chose particular actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan along with other components such as camera angles, sound, and lighting making the movie in 2013 and having larger emotional effect compared to the novel. Based on my prior knowledge from the novel, the actors in the film surpassed my expectations. In my opinion, knowing the plot of the story made me note every individual facial expression and body action each actor did. In particular, Leonardo Dicaprio did a

The scene starts with tilting at Daisy’s shoes and transitions into shot-reverse-shot between Daisy and Gatsby as they see each other for the first time in five years. Unlike the party scene, shot-reverse-shot was used to add suspense to the audience since it takes a few moments before Daisy speaks rather than having the audience follow the pace of the scene. Giving these points, the use of shot-reverse-shot and lighting enhances the setting by having the audience connected with the scene and following along with the theme of