Luhrmann The Great Gatsby

“While Luhrmann’s film does offer a visually-pleasing adaptation of The Great Gatsby, his overall reading of the novel is too simplistic and misses the more nuanced arguments from the primary text. True, Luhrmann has a wonderful eye for visuals, but it comes at too great a cost for the source material he adapts. Basically, he is too concerned with creating pretty pictures instead of letting the language and story work on their own merit. Luhrmann’s emphasis on creating striking visuals forces him to present the characters as scenery props instead of the complex, thematic devices they are in the novel. For example, Luhrmann’s treatment of the Owl Eyes character serves as the strongest example of his simplistic, surface-level reading of the …show more content…
As a student, I have gone through many teachers, all with lasting impacts, arguably, not all good. Although I cannot say I have looked through the looking glass of the teaching side, or walked a mile in any of my professor’s shoes; I’ve noted there is an importance to teachers who not only develop characters on a page, but the characters of their students. You, Mr. Smith, have dedicated your life to teaching students, enabling their comprehension. As Aristotle says, ‘Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.’ As an eternal optimist and someone who admires your dedication to literature, I believe you have the best intent for all of your students. I’d hope you want us, your class, not to simply know, but to understand. To face opposing viewpoints in the eye, with the courage of David, Hercules, even cowardly Scotty Smalls, from the Sandlot - remaining solid in our beliefs and the consequences of our actions. My intentions are not to convince you to enjoy the film, instead I argue why it should be shown. Why it must be shown. Similarly to those before me who succeeded in delivering their viewpoint on controversy, you might have noted I included your letter addressing the film adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s own understanding of the renown literary classic, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by Scott F. Fitzgerald - at the initial start of this letter. Your chosen descriptors of Luhrmann’s piece, ‘basic’, ‘simplistic’ and ‘surface-level’ only …show more content…
Fitzgerald. Baz Luhrmann interpreted what he deemed to be the foremost ideas of the novel, motioning them to be translated onto the screen. You, Mr. Smith, argue that Luhrmann’s piece was ‘surface-level’, however your own interpretation of the film proves to be exactly that; surface-level, as what you claim Luhrmann lacks, he makes up for exquisitely, in other areas of the film. Exhibited through the character Owl Eyes; although significant to the novel as a key foreshadow, Luhrmann makes up for the absence of Owl Eyes’ predictions with the frequent, flashy car races he uses to allude to darker ideas, translate at the end of the book. On page 53 of Fitzgerald’s novel, it reads ‘violently shorn of one wheel, rested a new coupé which had left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before.’ The culprit of the wreckage, to be expected, was Owl Eyes. A ‘simplistic and surface-level’ reader would analyze this selection of the Great Gatsby and take away a simple car crash. However, the recklessness of the action and the carelessness that pursues after the collision establishes a central idea throughout the piece: the brash, negligence of the upper class. Although Luhrmann brushes over this specific scene for reasons I, myself, cannot factualize - perhaps for the conservation of time, but certainly not for his ‘basic understanding’ of the text - he still