![]() When Tom espouses his vile racial philosophies one might think that someday he might actually do something about it. Bruce Dern played Tom as a kind of loopy (Dern's specialty) racial conspiracy nut, but Edgerton gives Tom a much harder edge. He has status and wealth because he's supposed to have status and wealth, and he's not about to give up all that, and certainly not his wife, to this new money usurper Gatsby, without a fight. Tom is as rich, maybe even richer than Gatsby, but his money is old, he is an aristocrat with a deep sense of entitlement. He and Daisy were married when Daisy could no longer wait for Gatsby to prove himself worthy of her. Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) is Gatsby's antagonist. This is not a shining white knight rescuing a damsel in distress this is a bare knuckles brawl for the hand of Daisy, and she is going to have to choose. This decision (both DeCaprio's and Luhrmann's) to take Gatsby down from some ethereal literary icon into a flesh and blood human being gives the movie an intensity that the 1974 version and most of the literary criticism of the book that I have ever read, never perceived. ![]() For myself, it is DeCaprio's best and most powerful performance. He has a plan and he is going to execute it and as far as he is concerned, for all the right reasons. DeCaprio's Gatsby is forceful, decisive he is a determined man of significant accomplishment and great ability. Redford's Gatsby seemed reticent and insecure about his past regretful that he must live a lie in order to accomplish his goal. Leo DeCaprio is the only actor of this generation that could play Gatsby, just as Robert Redford could only play Gatsby the previous generation. He is going to win her back and make things as they should have been. Daisy was Gatsby's great love, but he lost her, and now in one final herculean effort he is going to correct his past this one last time. No, he did everything, and I mean everything, for the love of a woman. But it is not for them that Gatsby has made this remarkable metamorphosis. ![]() This belief, that he can change his past, to correct it as it were, has given him a veneer of respectability that has put him in good stead with his underworld connections. He has acquired his fabulous wealth through bootlegging and stock swindles. Unlike Alger's heroes, he has not followed the straight and narrow. He is the American success myth both personified and perverted. He is the self made American man in every way. In true Horatio Alger tradition he has worked hard to improve himself, but when his past creeps up on him and threatens his well crafted self image, he suavely and effortlessly changes it, his past, and he inhabits the change until it becomes the reality. Jay Gatsby has achieved success in a fashion beyond most imaginations, excepting his own. Especially this Aussie, Baz Luhrmann, who is known to overload, over-hype and overcook his theatrical product into a glittery miasma of small meaning and little consequence. How dare some Aussie come over here and tell us about the meaning of one of the great works of American literature. The party following that premiere was a lavish, pricey affair that people still talk about in Hollywood circles, so expect plenty of fireworks.THE GREAT GATSBY There is no movie I have been more prepared to dislike than this one. The last time Luhrmann brought a movie to Cannes was in 2001 as well, when Moulin Rouge! bowed opening night. The film reunites DiCaprio with his Romeo & Juliet director Luhrmann, and also marks the first time life-long pals DiCaprio and Maguire have starred in a movie together since the 2001 straight-to-video disaster Don’s Plum. The Great Gatsby, distributed by Warner Bros., was supposed to be released on Christmas Day 2012, but was pushed back to a May 10 stateside release due to the packed holiday schedule. Steven Spielberg, meanwhile, will head the festival’s jury. The Cannes Film Festival, which will run May 15–26, has had a solid string of opening-night films in recent years, with 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom and 2011’s Midnight in Paris. This is only the second time in the festival’s history that the opening-night film will be screened in 3-D-the first was Pixar’s Up, which debuted at the fest in 2009.
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