The Dream of Gatsby

It has everything that makes a movie a movie in the very best sense: the dreamlike quality that lifts the viewer out of reality and into a world that isn't a real world. The scene in The Great Gatsby where we first meet Daisy had to compete with the image in my mind, but the flowing drapes -- white, undulating, flying, covering, revealing -- are better than in my own imagination. Any film based on a beloved classic novel has a lot to contend with, to match up to, to surpass without changing what the devoted reader has created. But an iconic tale of a time period has an almost impossible task in trying to please its audience.

For the most part, Baz Luhrmann's version released this past weekend accomplishes what I didn't think it could. Tobey Maguire as the narrator is perfectly cast as the man who is there but isn't there. Carey Mulligan works as the vulnerable Daisy. The parties, the music -- I do admit I was concerned in advance about the music, about Luhrmann's potential to ruin the Jazz Age by using not jazz. But the wildness of the parties, the dreamscape of debauchery, the sparkle, the flare-up of fireworks real and metaphorical carry the audience to the past, yes, but not a real past. In the real past, the eyes of God didn't watch over the racing decadence of the 1920s, just like they don't today.

The one weakness of the film, though I hate to say it, is Leonardo DiCaprio. It could be that no actual human being could ever be Jay Gatsby. That level of charisma may not exist in anything other than the written word. DiCaprio is handsome, yes, and dazzling in those suits, in that car. But he doesn't look at people the way narrator Nick tells us he does. He doesn't capture them.

Still, for me, seeing the glamour was enough. The rainbow of shirts spilling onto the bed. The flowers overwhelming Nick's cottage. The dives taken into the pool, the streaking cars, the contrasting grayness of the in-between. The Great Gatsby takes us away to the land of dreams, where we want movies to take us.