Fitzgerald gets the Luhrmann treatment.

Pictured (from left): Tobey Maguire is Nick, Leonardo DiCaprio is Gatsby, Carey Mulligan is Daisy, and Joel Edgerton is Tom in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby


Baz Lurhmann, with his upcoming film of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has the unique and difficult position of being not only the director attempting to adapt a work that is more of a cultural icon than a book, but he is attempting to do so while retaining his hard-earned status as an auteur filmmaker. Many have entered this realm before him, but few with as important a work as Gatsby. For example, the majority of Hitchcock’s films take their source material from literature, but we do not measure the success of Psycho in its closeness to Robert Bloch’s novel, nor do we condemn Stanley Kubrick for straying from the original texts of The Shining or A Clockwork Orange.

This of course is not to assume Luhrmann’s Gatsby will be a cinematic landmark as those films are, but he does share an important trait with them: he is a director defined by his unique style, and anything he directs must be taken as a Baz Lurhmann film as opposed to an adaptation of another author’s words. This is not F. Scott Fitzgerald’s film of The Great Gatsby, it is Luhrmann’s, which will likely entail all the bizarre extravagance we would expect it to. And judging by the trailer, it seems to deliver on this promise.

The immediate “backlash” to the first trailer is predictable as it is completely well-founded. When one pictures The Great Gatsby, one does not immediately conjure the hyper-stylized universe that Lurhmann seems to be creating (one that remains set in 1922 yet contains the music of Jay Z and Jack White). Then again, how many of us read Romeo and Juliet and thought of bright Hawaiian shirts set in an exaggerated mash-up of Mexico City and Venice Beach. If there is one thing Baz Luhrmann has never seemed to be concerned with, it’s making everyone happy. This of course has worked both for and against him (usually with equal fervor from both sides). And Gatsby will probably be no different. Hardcore traditionalist fans of the book will likely balk at it, hardcore fans of Luhrmann will probably love it (if simply because they feel obligated to) but as one analysis of the trailer aptly put, “when it comes to Luhrmann, the opinions of traditionalists are irrelevant.”

This is a director with a very distinct, loud, and often ridiculous voice. If there is one thing that can almost assuredly be said about his interpretation of The Great Gatsby, it is probably nothing like any of ours. Whether that worries or excites you is a different matter.