The Great Gatsby focuses on the social and cultural conventions of the time.  Today, we still see the use of excess to temper boredom, the longing for a better, different life, and how life can turn on a dime based on the choices you make.  Fitzgerald’s themes are timeless, and so director Baz Luhrmann is able to take this classic and make it seem as it it was made for today’s audience.  And as with Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet, he’s infused The Great Gatsby with all the beauty, opulence and magic the movies have to offer.  The Great Gatsby allows you to get a feel of Fitzgerald’s New York, but after over two hours there’s so much style but very little substance.  It’s a small price to pay for production design addicts (like me) to get their fix, but folks wanting more may be disappointed.

For folks who can’t remember reading the book back in high school, Gatsby is a story told by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a young man who moves to Long Island in the midst of the Roaring Twenties.  Nick doesn’t have money, but he’s given up his dream of being a writer to try his hand at bond trading.  His wealthy cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) has married a millionaire (Joel Edgerton, as Tom Buchanan), but isn’t happy in her marriage.  When Nick meets his enigmatic neighbor Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), they form a friendship.  And when Jay asks Nick to invite Daisy to tea, their lives take a turn nobody could have foreseen.  There’s jealousy, love, hate, lies, heartbreak and murder; all the makings of a great story.  And it is a great story, even though I found Daisy to be an obnoxious, selfish little twit when I first read the book.  Still do, in fact.  But ahh, amour.  Amour!

The delicious 3D of the opening sequence — that starts off a ragged, black-and-white only to blossom and zoom at you in glorious color — is a taste of possibility.  It’s a perfect start to this film, that is all about what is possible, and how people try to reach for the stars.  The Great Gatsby is a lovely cinematic fever dream.  Cinematographer Simon Duggan (Underworld: Evloution and the upcoming 300: Rise of an Empire) is able to not only bring the flashy, Busby Berkeley-esque excess to life, but also has a way with scenes where fog, dust or ashes play center stage.  This film is definitely a hand-in-hand project, with Luhrmann’s direction, Duggan’s cinematic art, and Catherine Martin’s glorious production design.  Martin is also to be thanked for the drool-worthy costumes (though Tiffany gets a tip of the hat for the bling).  The Great Gatsby looks like the 1920s as filtered through Blade Runner.  There’s opulence and anguish, glorious abundance and deep pits of poverty.  It’s all amazing, and the best eye-candy that’s come our way this year.

The closer Gatsby gets to what he wants, the more things begin to fall apart.  That means the actors better bring their best work for these emotional shifts and swirls.  Luckily they do.  DiCaprio is the Gatsby I imagined in my high-school head; all hope and dreams with little thought to reality.  Mulligan manages to infuse the childish, thoughtless Daisy with heart.  Maguire and Edgerton also inhabit their roles, and Edgerton does a great job of getting into the head of the story’s “Bad Guy”.  Relative newcomer Elizabeth Debicki is wonderful as Jordan, Daisy’s friend and Nick’s sometimes date.  She wears flapper well, and delivers a glorious performance.

I just wish the movie gave the actors a bit more of the stage.  Yes, Luhrmann delivers a glorious vision.  Yes that vision is beautiful and every detail is perfection.  But this felt a little bit like a full-color movie catalogue that viewers are supposed to ooh and ahh over, rather than a story we’re supposed to actually care about.  As Daisy, Gatsby and Tom’s stories play out, we’re swept away from one delightful eye-candy scene to the next.  Hell, even the “Valley of Ashes” (aka Flushing, NY) is beautiful in it’s ashy, Grapes-of-Wrath-meets-J-Crew kinda way.  The themes are painted on celluloid, but they don’t echo from the mouths of the actors, or at least not loud enough that you’re actually caring about what they’ve got to say.  They’re beautiful, talented chess pieces that glide through the movie.  Each time a climactic point was reached, instead of being moved, I ended up thinking “oh, now is when XXX will happen.  Okay.”  But then the gorgeous 3D burned that thought away and I went right back to focusing on the pretty.

The soundtrack is full of today’s hep cats, and yet it blends perfectly with the excess and opulence of Gatsby’s 1920’s Long Island.  Some musicians take their own music and swing it to a 20s jazz beat — Bryan Ferry’s “Love Is The Drug” sounds amazing, backed by his own Bryan Ferry Orchestra, of course.  Bey hands over the reins to Emeli Sandé for “Crazy In Love”, which turns the cranked-up dance tune into a haunting whisper of desire.  Fergie, Jay-Z, Kanye, Nero and Florence + The Machine and many more all deliver the goods.  You’ll probably want to add the entire soundtrack to your iTunes, because this’ll be a terrific summertime playlist on it’s own.  (Rdio is streaming the entire soundtrack for free, btw.  Make up your own mind, then thank me later.)

Like the huge eyes watching from their billboard, viewers of The Great Gatsby see everything, but the characters are blind.  Willfulness, hope, hatred, passion; this film shows it all.  But like Daisy, we’re not personally affected.  The Great Gatsby is sure to rack up the award nods for it’s glorious beauty.  If Gatsby goes on longer than it should, that’s a small problem.  That Gatsby’s death echoes DiCaprio’s demise in Titanic?  Also a hiccup.  (I do pity that Leo always seems to be dying for his love.)  But it doesn’t let you forget for one moment that this is a film that you let happen to you, not one you participate in.