Something to watch tonight: Friday 4 April
The Great Gatsby (Luhrman, 2013)
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I alluded yesterday to the mismatch between films and shows that I want to recommend and their availability (or lack of) on streaming services.
The Netflix catalogue contains fewer than 4000 feature films and, of that total, barely 100 are from the previous millennium. Contrast that with Aro Street Video here in Wellington which has a catalogue of over 27,000 physical titles (and is trying hard to keep the collection together).
The hidden gems online really are hidden gems but I appreciate that I have to mention the likes of Netflix, Disney+ and Prime as that’s where many of us are putting our subscriber dollars.
Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby is a case in point. Two-time Oscar-winner, starring the biggest movie star on the planet (at the time) and based on “the great American novel”, I doubt whether many readers will be blind to its existence.
This isn’t even a wholeheartedly positive recommendation – like many critics I wasn’t totally sold – but this review from June 2013 has some my favourite writing:
For all the digital glitter and anachronistic hip-hoppery that signifies our latest re-entry into Luhrman-land, The Great Gatsby itself takes fundamental inspiration from a black and white classic from 1941. Featuring a flashback framing device, a lonely and heartsick tycoon staring out of the window of a grotesque castle, and even a breathless deathbed “Daisy” uttered as if it summed up an entire life (like “Rosebud”), Gatsby is no less than Baz Luhrman’s Citizen Kane. Even his star, Leonardo DiCaprio is starting to resemble a Wellesian hero, at least in the jowels if not the girth.
So, no pressure, then, Baz – you’re only merging the great American novel and the greatest movie of all time. Of course, he can’t possibly succeed on his own unimaginably ambitious terms, but he falls a bit short on the basic “tell a story” level too – even if he manages to make some sequences sing.
Set in 1922 (and written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, well before the Jazz Age came crashing down into the Great Depression), Gatsby is the story of one man’s reinvention out of the trauma of World War One and into the longest, biggest (and most illegal) party the world had ever seen.
DiCaprio’s Gatsby has built a business empire out of the drug stores and speakeasies of Manhattan and a Xanadu on the shores of Long Island, all the while gazing longingly across the water at the house where Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) lives. Daisy is the last piece of his puzzle, she will make him whole and she will help him gain acceptance into the high society that scorns his dubiously-earned new money. He may also genuinely be in love with her, of course.
You can read the rest here, along with the adorable Kurdish kids in Bekas (not available online in NZ), London-set Fast & Furious 6 (“Fast & Furious is vast and curious”), and a Swedish biopic about an anti-Nazi newspaper editor, The Last Sentence.
Where to watch The Great Gatsby
Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix or TVNZ+ (free with ads)
Australia: Streaming on Netflix or Stan
Canada: Streaming on Prime Video or Starz
Ireland: Digital rental
India: Streaming on Prime Video
USA: Digital rental
UK: Digital rental