In the current paper we will review a movie “The Great Gatsby”, and we will analyze the movie in terms of its genre and the elements of film. As a part of my role as a movie critic I will create my own scale to rate the movie. I will use a scale of 1 through 5 stars, which is typical of many movie critic writers.
I can say that the film is typical for its drama genre. I feel that the editing was appropriate and gave reflection of the important moments the way people should see it. The sound use was powerful and effective, which helped to highlight the most important moments in the film. The feelings when I watched the film were pleasure and sadness. The film’s cinematography supported the mood and tone of the movie, by including music in it, they way characters talked and what they did. The social context in which the film was made, was present in the film by showing the all people were connected and knew someone in common. The meaning of the film is about the great love, sacrifice, and decency. The film is also about the love of Gatsby for stupid, and greedy Daisy, tinsel at his parties, his crazy wealth, his crony “old man” – and with all of this, he has deep intelligence, cleaner, brighter and more decent than the real aristocrats have, who eventually destroy this man with their marginal hands.
Considering the personal influences that this film had on me, I can name the money issue and the relationships. This film highlights the idea that people need someone to love, and not all the money in the world to be happy. This film also shows that time passes and sometimes we have to choose relationships or career. The drama shows us how people can be unhappy being rich as the same time and looking for love which they one day left in the past. The film was extremely enjoyable and interesting to watch this reflection on the modern society. I would definitely recommend the movie and I would rate it by giving it 5 stars.
“The Great Gatsby” is a film adaptation of the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It has been filmed in 3D, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire. Baz Luhrmann conceived this film during the global financial crisis, while staying in Siberia. In one interview, he said: “If you put people in front of a mirror that tell them – you are drunk on the money – they will not want to look into it. But if you project a reflection on a particular era, such a story would be in a great demand.” One of the most famous writers of the United States of XX century, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced to the world the beginning of the new century – “Jazz Age”, one of the first to speak on behalf of the “lost generation” (Scott, 2013). He wrote of the “American dream”, personifying it, but the reality turned into tragedy, and early death cut short the life minion of fortune. The hero of the novel “The Great Gatsby” made a fortune, has made power, but neither money nor power made him happy.
In the spring of 1922, in the era of decaying morals, the brilliant jazz and the “kings of smuggled alcohol,” Nick Carraway comes from the Midwest to New York. In pursuit of his own American dream, he settles in next door to a mysterious, well – known for its partying millionaire Jay Gatsby, and on the opposite shore of the bay lives his cousin Daisy and her husband, a rake and an aristocrat, Tom Buchanan (Denby, 2013). So Nick is drawn into the exciting world of the rich – their illusions, love and lies. He becomes a witness to what is happening in this world and writes a story of impossible love, eternal dreams and the human tragedy that is a reflection of modern times and mores.
The film is about the great love of a man (Gatsby) to a woman (his beloved Daisy). He dedicated his life to her, she was his dream, his guiding star, the most desirable, unique and unrepeatable. They are from different worlds – she is a spoiled rich girl, but he is the son of poor farmers. He wanted to be rich enough to give the whole world to his Daisy, giving her everything she wants. And for that, he went to war, after that he received the opportunity to study at Harvard, make useful contacts, enter the circle of influential people, and after that he contacted the gangsters involved in clandestine sale of alcohol (it brought a lot of money, because in America at the time was the dry law) … And all this was for the sake of dreams ever marry Daisy, reaching a high position, and having a considerable fortune.
As he says at the end of the film, that all these years without even being married to Daisy, he felt married, and therefore responsible for their future together. That is why he risked so much in his work. He did not need anyone except her. Also, there is a storyline about the community, about the so-called elite of society, riot, rottenness, the hypocrisy of so-called “high society.” Scott Fitzgerald wrote a lot about contemporary American society (this is the beginning of the 20th century), his morals, his true face, and his hypocrisy.
The film “The Great Gatsby” is just perfect. Throughout the excesses of emotion and colors it has its own kind of inexplicable harmony. Even the apparently modern soundtracks so neatly stacked on one long bygone world that seem natural. The film is a wonderful adaptation of the novel by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald’s classic novel got into the hands of Baz Luhrmann, the famous magician, entertainer, that is why you see on the screen exactly what you expected – literature is retreating under the pressure of design (“The Great Gatsby” Critic Reviews, 2013). Crystal blinds, champagne is bubbling and expensive cars strive to crash into the viewer. At the same time, the director manages carefully with the original text, sometimes reproducing it verbatim, and the image of Gatsby suits Leonardo DiCaprio.
“If you measure the personality of its ability to show itself, the Gatsby was something truly magnificent, had some heightened sensitivity to all the promises of life … It was a rare gift of hope, a romantic ardor, which I have never seen in other people.”
The film describes a unique situation where a man not just knows what he wants, but he knows that will make him happy. He showed that this happens – bootlegging not drunk, the goal is visible, jazz sounds. And the man still, just does not think that the business is outside of the law, that his goal is illusory, and jazz it not as stylish as in the twenty-first century. The man knows what it takes to be happy, and it happens so rarely that he is trying so hard. And this divine tragedy by the author explained: “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart”.
References
David Denby (2013). “All that Jazz”. The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/05/13/130513crci_cinema_denby
Scott A. O. (2013). “Shimmying Off the Literary Mantle”. NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/movies/the-great-gatsby-interpreted-by-baz-luhrmann.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
“The Great Gatsby” Critic Reviews (2013). The Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343092/criticreviews