strange and random happenstance: Tom Buchanan

The Great Gatsby
Based on the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Starring: Sam Waterston, Bruce Dern, Mia Farrow, Lois Chiles, Robert Redford, Scott Wilson, Karen Black, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Edward Herrmann, John Devlin, Howard Da Silva, Patsy Kensit, Marjorie Wildes, and Roberts Blossom
Release Date: March 29th, 1974
Rating: ★★
To Rent

Nick Carraway is sailing the choppy waters from West Egg to East Egg to visit an old classmate from Yale and his wife, who happens to be Nick's cousin. Tom and Daisy Buchanan have a luxurious life of ponies and idleness. In fact Daisy barely is able to work up anything other than a sweat in the hot summer air until her friend Jordan mentions Nick's neighbor, a certain Gatsby who is known for his parties. But Gatsby's name is soon forgotten as Tom's mistress calls the house just as they are about to sit down to their repast. Tom is wild about his mistress Myrtle, and soon Nick is headed into New York City to spend a day cavorting with Tom and Myrtle and their new puppy. Their relationship is painted as a tragic love story, both no longer love their spouses and want to be together, but rumor is that Daisy, being a Catholic, would never allow a divorce. They live in a world of rumor and supposition. No one knows what's true or what's fantasy. And no one is gossiped about more than Gatsby. Did he kill a man? Did he go to Oxford? Did his family die and leave him a fortune? Did he earn all the money for his mansion in only three years? Soon Nick will be closer to the truth than anyone else as Gatsby invites him into his house and into his confidence. Because Gatsby needs Nick. Nick will be his conduit to Daisy. Gatsby has loved Daisy since they first met though they haven't set eyes on each other in almost eight years. Nick can be the cover for their affair and from Nick's point of view, if Tom is free to be with Myrtle why can't Daisy be with Gatsby? Their affair takes them back to their youth as they waltz about his house, he in his uniform, her in her debutante dress, yet perfect happiness is hard to find in this world, which is messy and complicated. Perhaps it's a fool's errand to think you can recapture what is lost, and they are all perfect little fools.

The 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby is a technicolor phantasmagoria that felt like it had more in common with Roald Dahl's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that debuted three years earlier than the original source material by F. Scott Fitzgerald. As we luxuriate over a veritable rainbow of shirts and more vintage copper jelly molds than I've ever seen I almost expected Mia Farrow to break into song using one of the many fish-shaped molds as her singing partner. Because this adaptation is all about how things look, the feel of old Hollywood, the pastel suits and shirts suitable for a revival of Easter Parade, forgetting that classic cinema actually crafted a narrative that didn't feel like one overly long photoshoot for Ralph Lauren, who actually provided Redford's costumes. That idea of the still image, the photograph, is brought home again and again with the images of Daisy plastered throughout Gatsby's private rooms. And if the visuals hadn't bombarded you enough with the director's vision the music will drive it further into your brainpan with the constant use of the song "What'll I Do." That earworm of "what'll I do with just a photograph of you" will get under your skin like an itch you cannot scratch while the actors play at being in a film while actually just sleepwalking through this piece trying to look pretty for the camera. Pretty pictures of what was and will always be a doomed romance with some heavy handed foreshadowing means the film has created it's own symbolism instead of actually bothering with any of the book's. In fact I feel sorry for Bruce Dern, while Redford and Farrow are off waltzing in prewar garb in some tragic glimpse of faded romance, he should be applauded for being memorable with what little he was given because the rest of this film could float away like one of those pink clouds Daisy wishes to put Gatsby in and no one would miss it when it's gone.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Adaptation, Bruce Dern, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Daisy Buchanan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby, Hollywood, Mia Farrow, Roald Dahl, Roaring Back to Reading, Robert Redford, The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Published by: Penguin
Publication Date: 1925
Format: Hardcover, 198 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Nick Carraway has moved east to sell bonds in New York City. Because that's what young men do to make money right? Move east and sell bonds. But living out on Long Island he has an advantage across the bay. His wealthy former classmate from Yale, Tom Buchanan, lives in a luxurious house with his wife Daisy, who just happens to be Nick's cousin. At Nick's first dinner at their home he meets Jordan Baker, a rather infamous golfer, and gets ringside seats to the drama of the Buchanan household. There's trouble in paradise as Tom's mistress has the gall to call during the dinner hour! Of course, being old classmates, Nick is drawn into Tom's extramarital activities, and it isn't long before Nick is partying in the couple's love nest in the city where Myrtle's sister is insisting to Nick that Tom and Myrtle are miserable in their marriages and if it wasn't for Daisy being a Catholic there'd be two divorces and one marriage faster than you can blink. Nick can't be sure of this assertion and soon his life is about to be complicated by even more intrigue. He's going to be brought into Jay Gatsby's orbit. Jay Gatsby is Nick's infamous neighbor. Infamous for his parties and his secretive past. Everyone comes to his parties and yet no one ever sees him. Nick is about to see a lot of him as he brings Nick into his world and into his greatest regret, losing Daisy, the love of his life. He asks Nick to be a go-between. Of course fearing rejection he uses his own go-between, Jordan Baker. The request is simple enough, can Nick invite Daisy to his humble abode, only to have Gatsby swing in and take them to his manse next door? Nick is glad to help, especially as it's Jordan asking, and soon, like Daisy, he is under Gatsby's spell. But as Gatsby and Daisy's courtship from before the war proves, love and wooing never go smooth. Soon Tom realizes what is happening and there is a great reckoning that not everyone survives. That is the price of wealth and woo.

The Great Gatsby is light on plot with little depth and an unreliable narrator and for those very reasons it has become a classic. Other than a distinct "Americanness" and much rumination on the American Dream, everything is open to interpretation. Can we believe a word Nick says? Probably not. Can we blame Gatsby for how he made his fortune in order to woo the woman he loves? Depends on how he really got his money... which the characters themselves like to discuss ad nauseam. Can the valley of ashes be real or is it just a metaphor? You can literally read anything you want into this book. I was strongly reminded in the laborious and best skipped introduction of certain friends of mine who can talk for hours on end about the color symbolism in 2001: A Space Odyssey. What red means in one shot, followed by the blue of another. If they had a desire to, which I'm sure they don't, they could go into the symbolism of color that larders the pages of this book. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock, the golden sheen coming off Gatsby, all of it can be taken as something or nothing. The green could be tied to Daisy and how her voice is full of money. The green could be her openness to Gatsby's return. His golden sheen could be an outward aura of his wealth or a reference to the golden calf from the Bible and all the symbolism that weights him down because of that. In fact, though I never took a high school class that actually read The Great Gatsby, I can see why it's a popular one to teach. There is so much that can be drawn out of this book literally anything any student says is a possible interpretation. There is no wrong answer where it comes to The Great Gatsby! In fact, here's my weird little interpretation. I think The Great Gatsby is the inspiration for the TV series Remington Steele. Now prove me wrong! You literally can't. Steele is a man of infinite style whose past is dubious and who embodies the American Dream. He may or may not have tragedy in his past and as for that past, it shifts and changes with each retelling. Who knows, he might also have medals for heroic service as well as the known warrants for his arrest. This is how much this one book has become a part of the American consciousness that a popular TV show from the 80s could draw meaning form it for a modern audience and make it continually relevant. The Great Gatsby is a book for the ages.