Whether you love Baz Luhrmann or hate him, you've got to admire his consistency, and his dedication to his own wild and colorful vision of the world. His movies look like no other, and it's an enormous experiment to see how his aesthetic of excess will translate to what's probably the best American novel ever, The Great Gatsby. Writing about the lavish Roaring 20's, F. Scott Fitzgerald used prose that was precise and elegant and heartbreaking; translating it to the screen, Luhrmann is throwing on 3D and giant movie stars and music from Beyonce and Lana del Rey.
Will it work? I have no idea, but I can't wait to find out. This latest trailer gives us more of a sense than ever of the dark directions the story heads, with a lot of focus on Joel Edgerton's Tom Buchanan, the brooding and brutish wife of Carey Mulligan's Daisy who lurks in the background as Daisy and Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) rekindle their romance. And there are a whole lot of fights to witness, from a conflict between Gatsby and Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire)-- which I had completely forgotten was in the novel-- to the car accident that claims the life of Isla Fisher's Myrtle. I guess you can't really call a spoiler on something in a book everyone in America read in 10th grade, but I was surprised to see the hit-and-run in there-- it's a pivotal moment in the book that I, at least, was curious to see onscreen.
With a Cannes premiere planned, music from Beyonce and Andre 3000 (which you can hear in the above trailer, along with Lana del Rey) and the promise of being the glitziest summer movie imaginable, The Great Gatsby is set to arrive in May with a whole lot of fanfare-- though we still don't quite know if it will earn it. As one of the few people on the planet who actually liked Australia, I'm more than ready. Are you?
