"Gatsby? What Gatsby?"

I saw it last night!!! Oh my goodness. It was SO good! It wasn't word for word, action for action from the book, but some how even the things they added - Tom showing Nick his trophies; shots of Gatsby, Nick and Daisy hanging out at Gatsby's house and so on - were so in tune with the book that it felt like, rather than being a slightly stilted carbon copy (like the 1974 one) it captured the feeling of the book to perfection.

Carrie Mulligan - as I already prophesied - was the most wonderful Daisy. Her eyes were incredible. Completely sensitive, she managed to show everything Daisy seemed to be feeling and then suddenly something behind her eyes would drop and you would see what she was actually feeling and then that something would come back up and she would seem once again charming and sweet and untouchable. It was an incredible performance. She was exactly as Daisy should have been.

And Leonardo DiCaprio. Wow. Where to start? He was amazing. At one point in the book it talks about Gatsby's smile - I'm not sure where my copy of the book is so I can't quote it exactly, but it is quoted exactly in the movie and that smile is talked about as seeming to be super intimate. As though at that moment you were all that he was thinking of. You and your comfort and when he smiled he seemed to "believe in you like you would like to believe in yourself." (that one is a direct quote) And DiCaprio did it. It was perfect. It truly did seem exactly as it was described. The picture can't capture it. It just can't. Also Gatsby was described as an incredibly hopeful man - I think that it actually says something about him "embodying hope". It's my belief that hope is the hardest emotion to portray when you're acting. It's such a spontaneous feeling in reality that it is incredibly difficult to "fake". But, once again, he did it. He was perfect. 

It truly was one of the best cast movies I've ever seen.

And then of course we must talk about his house. His house.  Oh my word. His house.  The opulence of it all was incredible. The pool, the front hall - which had this amazing staircase, and this magnificent chandelier hanging over a beautiful piano. Wide open windows, beautiful gardens, fountains, a private beach. It was absolutely fantastic. In the real sense of the word. Meaning almost fantasy-ish and impossible. Which in truth it was. It embodied his fantasy and wasn't really real. That is not to say it didn't actually exist, only meaning it was sort of a backdrop to the strange facade he played out. The facade that was his life. The life he had planned out for himself ever since he was a boy.

 And the parties. Again, wow. I don't think they used a single truly '20's song, they definitely used the soundtrack to give it a more modern feel, and yet it was perfect. Again, it was all about creating a mood for the movie. So the parties were set in the midst of hip-hop music, and it gave it exactly that crazy, pumped up feeling. As if anything could happen. Could and did.


And the clothes. Oh my word. The clothes were amazing. Two of my favorites are below. I couldn't find a very good picture of the one on the bottom, it was this amazing floor length robe that she was wearing over a swim suit. She looked incredibly beautiful.

 

There was so much more to this movie that I can't even begin to describe. I didn't get to sleep 'till roughly 1:30 - the movie ended around 12:00 - 'cause there was just so much to think about. Hemingway once said of Paris "It's a movable feast" and that was just how I felt about this movie. When it ended I literally sat there for a few minutes with out really realizing it was over and it took a few minutes longer for me to realize that there were tears pouring down my face. The entire movie was phenomenal.