The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020)

Film: The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020)
Stars: Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, Mick Jagger, Donald Sutherland
Director: Giuseppe Capotondi
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Genre is a strange thing.  With film we see it in most movies.  Westerns, musicals, comedies...with these subjects we have some sort of expectation of where the movie might lead us.  I don't entirely remember when The Burnt Orange Heresy came onto my purview; I believe it was one of the movies that was playing in the Landmark Theaters that I love so much right before the movie theaters closed but after I was too scared to go to a theater (Emma, which we profiled recently, would also meet this classification), and its cast intrigued me.  However, I was under the impression for some reason that the movie was a straight-forward drama, perhaps a coming of age film about a jaded young man who is taught a life lesson in the arms of a beautiful woman & by a wise old man.  While watching the trailer gives a bit more clues as to what the film plays into, it definitely has enough trappings of one genre (drama) to trick you into ignoring that it's really another (thriller).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around James (Bang), an art critic with clear talent, but who spends most of his days giving lectures to tourists about the importance of art criticism.  He meets in one of these lectures Berenice (Debicki), a beautiful but enigmatic woman with whom he starts an affair (one of those "we won't speak about our pasts" style ones that only exist in the movies).  They are invited to the splashy home of Joseph Cassidy (Jagger), a ludicrously wealthy art dealer who has a proposition for James.  He knows that James, already a pariah in some circles of the art world due to embezzlement, has certified & forged a Modigliani painting that Cassidy recently sold to the Tate.  If James can't procure a painting from the reclusive but storied Jerome Debney (Sutherland), who lives at the edge of Cassidy's property, Cassidy will out him to the world, ensuring he will never reclaim his status in the art world, and likely end up in jail.

This does sound like the set-up to a good thriller, potentially a caper if necessary, or a feel-good film where Debney eventually takes a shine to James & James gains redemption.  But these things don't happen, and the movie takes a dark turn.  Debney, it turns out, seems to have been an accidental genius, with his "empty frame" being something that everyone over-read into, similar to what James warns tourists about in the film's opening scenes.  He's been tricking Cassidy into letting him live on his property, but he has created nothing, the muse still there but not the urge to paint, so he just mentally sketches a canvass.  Berenice appreciates this, charmed by the old man, but James realizes without a painting he will be outed, and so he burns down Debney's studio, stealing one blank canvass that Debney has called "The Burnt Orange Heresy," and forges the painting, pretending it's an original Debney.  When Berenice discovers this, he murders her, first by drowning (and when she miraculously lives through that, by blunt object).  Drowned, his evidence is gone, and Debney soon dies (with us assuming Cassidy might have helped), and we get a true juxtaposition in the film's final moments, with Cassidy now owning the "only Debney" in the world, even though it's a forgery, while Berenice's mother, getting a painting as a present from Debney (that Cassidy assumes isn't signed, but in fact is), holds the only real painting, hanging with magnets on her fridge, a portrait of her daughter from memory.

This all sounds cool, and it kind of is.  The twists are welcome, upsetting the format, and giving us a genuinely scary thriller.  It just...doesn't gel.  None of the characters save for Jagger's Cassidy (Jagger is not a good actor, and it comes across in his stilted line readings, but he does embody a megalomaniac well) makes sense, and the remaining actors aren't able to make sense of the script.  Bang's James is too mysterious, not giving us enough hints of the cruelty underneath, while Debicki's Berenice doesn't give enough hints of the innocent.  I get the difference between the two-James is a forgery, someone who is more vested in the story than in authenticity, while Berenice, who doesn't lie about who she is (and thus Debney rewards her with a real painting), is an honest representation, but the script doesn't give us enough hints of these actors, and neither are able to land underwritten characters.  Sutherland's Debney feels rife with cliches about an aging artist, obsessed with the world & not the art that made him famous, but like the film itself, engages with intellectual exercises that don't work.  The movie is arguably at its best for shock value, and I can't say I didn't enjoy the twists, but when you examine the finished project it feels incomplete.

OVP: Tenet (2020)

Film: Tenet (2020)
Stars: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Production Design, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Well, after six months (and literally 169 movies caught at home) I have finally seen a movie in theaters since the start of quarantine...well, sort of.  I am still debating, but am probably getting close to the point where I will want to see films in theaters again, even if I time it so I'm going on a day that is less trafficked (and will be pickier about what I catch in a stadium), but for Tenet I lucked out.  A drive-in movie (80 minutes from my house, so appreciate the devotion) was showing this and so I drove all the way and watched this for the first time from my car (I'd never done a drive-in movie).  While I loved getting back into theater mode and enjoying a movie on the big-screen, I will admit that I enjoy traditional theaters better (there's something more immersive than sitting in your car, where it's easier to grab your phone or let your thoughts wander).  Still, even if I'd been forced to watch Tenet with subtitles, I sincerely doubt that stretches of Christopher Nolan's stunning-but-convoluted new epic would've made complete sense.

(Spoilers Ahead) Tenet has a lot of plot, some of which doesn't make sense upon first viewing, and the characters don't all have names but I'll attempt to ground for a discussion.  We have the Protagonist (Washington, who doesn't warrant a real name apparently), who in the opening scenes is in a Russian opera house trying to deactivate a bomb, and in the process is nearly shot by a bullet that "un-fires" and after he grabs a strange artifact, and eats a cyanide pill in order to stop himself from giving secrets to his captors.  It turns out this is a test, and that he is being recruited into a secret organization, partnered with Neil (Pattinson), and together they have to essentially stop Andrei Sator (Branagh), a man who has the ability to commune with the future.  Soon Neil & the Protagonist are communicating with the past, moving back using a weapon to correct or change the past; aided by Sator's wife Kat (Debicki), they eventually stop Sator from destroying the world with a dead man's switch, and in the end it is revealed that Neil has known the Protagonist for some time...and was in fact hired by him, as we learn the operation (Tenet) was the Protagonist's in the future, and he is the actual mastermind behind the Tenet operation.

The movie sounds awesome (with all of the complimentary & pejorative associations of that word), and it is.  The fight scenes early on in the movie, especially the car chase sequence, is well-constructed & impressive, and Nolan knows how to open a movie (the opera attack is thrilling, and a good reminder as to why we should be rooting for movie theaters to work-as this will never play as well on a small screen).  The acting is mixed, with Pattinson taking best-in-show.  Debicki is a brilliant actress, but kind of gets sidelined with the "grieving wife/mother" role that is such a Nolan cliche, and I don't know if Washington is quite up to the movie star caliber that you need to play this part (this is unfair because his dad is one of the great stars, but man it would've been cool to see a young Denzel in this role).

The problems are the same, though, that you'd expect from most Nolan films.  His movies always have the same four issues: bad parts for women, expository plotting, strange sound mixing, and a sloppy final half hour.  All of these are here in Tenet.  We already mentioned Debicki's underwritten part, but the plotting is worse.  The film requires a lot of dialogue explaining the complicated theories in Tenet, a sign, perhaps, that Nolan didn't quite know how to handle even the logistics of a time travel movie (he fell into a similar hole with Interstellar, though I liked Tenet better than that picture).  When you have to have your characters explain every complicated move you watch, it's proof you aren't nailing down the logistics of your film.  This affects the final act of the movie the most, with multiple, repetitive action sequences (it's hard to tell entirely what Robert Pattinson's Neil is doing during this it gets so convoluted), and even an obvious payoff (it's clear that the Protagonist is going to be the mastermind from the first art heist), doesn't feel satisfying we've detoured so much.

Nothing, though, compares to how bad the sound mixing was (I toyed with a 2-star rating just as punishment for this, but decided the movie is too good for that).  Seriously-Nolan's hatred of his own dialogue is bizarre.  There are scenes in the movie where the explosions or action are so loud you wish that the theater had subtitles, and it takes away from the movie because you don't understand what the (helmet-wearing) Aaron Taylor-Johnson & John David Washington are even saying.  This particularly becomes bad in the final thirty minutes, and that's a problem because if you're going to have high-concept detailing in your movie, you've gotta let us hear the explanations & emotions.  I looked past this with Dunkirk because of the hyper-realism (also because other than some spots with the dialogue, this feels like a home run), but this was a serious issue with Interstellar and Tenet it gets worse.  Someone needs to take Nolan aside and just let Willie Burton do his damn job please, because his films are too rare & too visually intriguing to be ruined by something so fixable.

Widows (2018)

Film: Widows (2018)
Stars: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson
Director: Steve McQueen
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oh man did I get behind on my reviews.  Theoretically I will be going to the movies in a few hours, but it could well just be one flick as I am so behind on my film reviews, particularly for 2018 pictures, that I could easily spend the next day just writing up here and still not get caught up (I am a Thanksgiving orphan today, but am thankful for all of those near and far that I love, particularly this year).  We're going to start out by reviewing the most recent movie I saw and see how far I can get while working my way backwards, with Widows being a picture that I caught on Tuesday night.  Steve McQueen's latest has had a lot of press in the past few days for a poor marketing campaign that resulted in a disappointing box office performance even though the reviews have been kind, with many wondering whether or not it will miss major Oscar nominations like McQueen's last film (Best Picture victor 12 Years a Slave) as a result.  While I can't get to the Oscar question quite yet, I can definitely add in my two cents on the film, and its misleading advertising campaign.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the lives of three widows whose husbands, members of Harry Rawlings's (Neeson) mob, recently died.  Harry's widow, Veronica (Davis), is a stoic woman who used to represent the teacher's union, and seems intent to know as little about her husband's dealings as possible, though you get the sense that she knew roughly what was happening and just didn't care.  The two have a seemingly strong marriage, but as the movie progresses, in flashbacks we understand that it was more complicated than that, with their son dying at the hands of a white police officer, and them being increasingly isolated from each other in the years since.  Harry's death resulted in roughly 3 million dollars being burned up, and the two men he stole it from Jamal Manning (Kaluuya), a candidate for alderman, and his sadistic brother Jatemme (Kaluuya), threaten to kill her if they don't get the money.  She recruits two other widows whose husbands died in the same sting that killed Harry named Linda (Rodriguez) and Alice (Debicki), and they plan on finishing Harry's next heist, robbing from the home of Jamal Manning's opponent Jack Mulligan (Farrell), who is looking to succeed his father Tom (Duvall) as City Alderman, with his eyes on one day becoming the Mayor of Chicago.

That's quite the thick plot, and the film, clocking in at 129 minutes, might get its best compliment from me in that it makes total sense and doesn't meander too much as we get to the eventual showdown.  There's little excess here, and McQueen has assembled the sort of ensemble you can only get if your last film won Best Picture.  Seriously-these are some of the best actors working (I haven't even mentioned Carrie Coon, Cynthia Erivo, & Jacki Weaver, all of whom are also on the call sheet), and you don't pull together thespians like this without some terrific work being had.  Debicki has gotten the lion's share of the kudos, and it's partially because this might be her most mainstream effort yet, going toe-to-toe with someone like Viola Davis, but it's probably just because she's sensational.  There's this great scene where she has to play opposite Weaver as her mother, trying to hold back an array of emotions, while the wrong ones keep sputtering out, and I loved the way she seems to be both a vulnerable person and someone who could take on the likes of Davis's Veronica.  Kaluuya gets the showiest part in the cast as Jatemme, a monstrous close-to-cameo role where his huge eyes and deliberate line readings result in genuine fear whenever he's on screen, but Debicki probably is the one who will get the most offers out of this film, and considering I've been cheering her on for years now, that's reason enough to see Widows.

The problem for McQueen's film is that it is marketed as an art house film, but it's frequently too conventional for such things.  That seems to be a problem for box office in recent years (look at something like mother! for another example), but he'd have been better off selling this as a smart action movie, which is what it is.  The further he delves into the marriage of Harry (who, spoiler alert again, is in fact not dead but shacking up with Carrie Coon and their infant son) and Veronica, the less we know about our leading lady.  Davis is a great orator and speech-giver as Veronica, but I'll admit that this felt more like her just showing off than finding a depth in her character.  I had a similar problem with parts of her performance in Fences, with her feeling too theatrical in her delivery, but chalked that up to her having played the part in the Cort Theater and it just came naturally after inhabiting the role for so long.  Widows doesn't have that excuse.  Davis can be mesmerizing, but I left knowing nothing about Veronica, to the point where the ending makes little sense (she sees Alice and smiles...but did she even like Alice?  And why-they hated each other right up until the end of the movie?).  There's stuff on the page that Davis could have taken advantage of, but her marriage feels paint-by-numbers, with her grief only informing certain checks on the film (I loved the way she brought her dog with her everywhere after Jatemme threatened him, not wanting to lose another loved one), but it feels like something was cut or missing on the editing room floor.  Like I said, these actors are too good to be left with a bad movie, which this certainly isn't, but it's also hard not to feel disappointed that considering the talent on-display here (Gillian Flynn wrote it!) that we didn't end up with an indisputable classic.

OVP: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

Film: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Kurt Russell, Sylvester Stallone, Karen Gillan, Elizabeth Debicki
Director: James Gunn
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few things have been as consistent (and as profitable) in the past few years as the Marvel Cinematic Universe coming out with 1-2 films a year, having people show up to the movies to catch the latest superhero installment (this also happens with the DC films, but no one seems to like them so it's kind of a bizarre conspiracy theory as to why they all seem to still be insanely profitable).  This May there was no exception, with the followup to one of my personal favorite films in the series, Guardians of the Galaxy (Winter Soldier is still the best movie by a wide margin the series has created, in my opinion) coming out.  Guardians set itself apart from Marvel and in particular the dour DC films by having a sense of humor about its crew, a motley group of space bandits led by a stuck-in-the-80's rebel named Peter Quill (Pratt).  Would the second film live up to the delight of the first?  Let's take a look...

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around Quill, after a hilarious interaction with the Sovereign People (headed by the glorious and vastly-underused-in-every-film Elizabeth Debicki), finding his father Ego (Russell), who is essentially a god that has both created and exists concurrently as a man and as his own planet.  This leads to Quill realizing that he has some magical powers (Starlord, indeed), and bonding with the man whom he never knew growing up.  All-the-while, the Sovereign are intent on coming back and attack him for Rocket slighting them and stealing their batteries, while Yondu (Rooker), Quill's surrogate father, is also being chased toward the planet by his rebelling troupe, who are now under the leadership of Taserface (and yes, the name is properly mocked).

While the film has its fun moments, particularly anything involving Debicki as the Sovereign (easily my favorite storyline of the bunch), I will admit that this felt fun in the way that Pitch Perfect 2 felt fun.  It was great being in the saddle again with these characters, and in particular the chemistry between, say, Cooper's Rocket and Diesel's Groot, or Pratt with pretty much anyone but particularly Russell, is charming, but the wear is starting to show that wouldn't have in the entire series if there hadn't been a sequel.  This may be blasphemous, but the reality is that sequels aren't always a good thing, particularly when they point out ways the initial movie failed, and here it's that the characters are somewhat underwritten and occasionally one-note.  Dave Bautista's Drax, for example, becomes increasingly annoying as the film goes on, his unconventional reactions to social cues being relatively predictable and groan-worthy.  The film is more reliant upon you remembering the minutia of the first film than I was used to for a comic book film (I had to rely for parts of the picture more on my childhood knowledge of the Marvel Universe than I can remember having to do in any comic book picture since before the 2008 relaunch), and is too long.  The entire sequence with Taserface, for starters, is a bit of a drag, and while I enjoy Sly Stallone randomly showing up as much as the next person, between this and Andy Garcia in Passengers, is it in Chris Pratt's contract that an Oscar nominee has to show up and do almost nothing for a paycheck?  Seriously-unless Stallone is being positioned for a later movie or to be the Samuel L. Jackson of the Guardians pictures, I don't get what that was...was he James Gunn's matinee idol or something?  I generally like Stallone, but he had literally nothing to do here.

Still, it was not a film without charms.  Kurt Russell is such a joy to see onscreen always, and he relishes this moment in the spotlight.  In what has to be on either the Makeup or VFX clip reel for the Oscars later this year (from what I've read it was a combination of both), Russell's de-aging at the beginning of the film is the closest I've seen to actually avoiding the Uncanny Valley, perhaps because it's more makeup than CGI (it puts even Rogue One from last year to shame on that front).  In fact, the reliance on traditional makeup in the movie is intense-in a film that is a throwback to a different era (the 1980s continue their bizarre reverence in cinema), James Gunn wanted to celebrate such a time.

Additionally, the movie is funny at parts.  It's hard not to like this crew, even if I feel like the gimmick is being stretched now more than added to...no one wants to see Peter Quill become an Iron Man-level cascade of serious, but the world of Marvel's cinema has never been great about going deeper (the point of a sequel) without finding a solid balance between humor and drama.  This is all to say, I don't know where this goes in the third film, even if the post-credits sequence gives an obvious hint that Adam Warlock could soon be in-store for us.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Are you leaving pleased, but not entirely as pleased as you were the first time?  Where do you think that the Guardians chapter of the Marvel universe should go next?  Are you feeling good about Adam Warlock as the next big challenge for the crew?  And who else is still in-awe of that Kurt Russell effect?  Share below!

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Film: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Stars: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant
Director: Guy Ritchie
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The films of Guy Ritchie have never been particularly within my wheelhouse.  I feel there might be some jokes that I am missing amidst the supremely British humor.  Yet, I can see their charms-Ritchie is most frequently focused on entertaining us rather than creating a larger message or brand, and that is clearly on-display in The Man from UNCLE, the long-gestating big-screen adaptation of the hit 1960's TV show.  The film, amidst a summer bereft of originality and new ideas (this has been the summer of the uninspired sequel/remake, hasn't it?), this is actually a reinvention that I can get behind.  Though the film is not without its faults, the movie itself is too much fun and the actors in the leads are too game (perhaps because the two male leads desperately need a hit) to not be enjoyable.  The film appears likely to be a box office bust, but it doesn't really deserve that title, as you should make a point to catch the film.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Napoleon Solo (Cavill), a suave American spy who is forced by his government to team up with a Russian agent Illya Kuryakin (Hammer) to help stop an attempt by a Nazi villainous Victoria Vinciguerra (Debicki) to gain access to a nuclear warhead.  Set during the height of the Cold War, the two have a reason to be butting heads (the night before they teamed up, their assignment was basically to kill each other), but with the daughter of a scientist named Gabby (Vikander), they set off on a mad dash to stop the bomb from getting to the Nazis, all-the-while frequently sabotaging each other and finding disagreements along the way.

Caper films are toward the very top of my list of favorite film genres, so I knew I'd have a partiality to this film before I even got in, but what made me love it so was the way that they approached the humor.  Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer are not great actors, and they might not even be good ones at this point (Hammer is almost certain to end up in a TV show after this considering that he tanked in both this movie and The Lone Ranger, killing two franchises though neither was remotely as bad as the critics have called, and couldn't get much prestige traction for J. Edgar), but Ritchie may be the first person to get some of their charms.  The reality is that both men are almost unnaturally good-looking; I was sitting between two women during the film, and both stated "oh my" at least twice for each of them while they were onscreen and I echoed the sentiments.  Rather than ignore this fact, Ritchie exploits it for comic effect, frequently having the two of them flirting with not just every woman onscreen, but even with each other (particularly Cavill with Hammer), causing sexual tension all-over-the-place.  The result of this is a film that actually mocks the hyper-sexualization of spy films and that shows a bit of grace when it comes to the characters, many of whose motives are hard to pin down.

It's these little touches that make up for the film's second half, which frequently feels rushed and a little convenient.  Elizabeth Debicki's Victoria is the highlight of the film (the villains always are), but while she can command the screen with unabashed movie star moxie, I felt like her story was a bit too thin.  I'm not asking for 3-dimensional here (that's not really the appeal), but perhaps more screen time.  Her funniest bit was balancing her clear attraction to Napoleon with her clear need to be in control and carry out evil, but that's relegated to only a handful of scenes.  Still, I would have liked to have seen more from her and more interplay between all of the characters.  Sadly, I'm guessing that I won't get much time with them again since this is pretty much begging for a sequel and it doesn't have the gross of a movie that will get one.  But kudos to all of the leads, including Alicia Vikander who may just deserve an Oscar by acclamation this year considering this is the third film of the year she bewitched me onscreen.

It has to be said before I go that the costume work in this film is outstanding.  Joanna Johnston finally won herself a nomination three years ago after years of somehow missing for major films (she frequently works with Steven Spielberg, and yet with Munich, Saving Private Ryan, and Forrest Gump she had never nailed down a nomination until Lincoln), but this is easily the best of her career.  The women's costumes feel plucked straight out of the closets of Twiggy and Catherine Deneuve, all mod wonder and crazily sexy elegance, while the men are dapper, but with a heightened sexuality; Johnston isn't afraid to make you stare at Henry Cavill's thighs or Armie Hammer's impossibly blue eyes. All-in-all, it's the sort of work that should be nominated for an Oscar, and for a branch that has not been afraid to nominate film flops like Anonymous, W.E., The Tempest, and The Affair of the Necklace in the past, I hope they continue that trend and give it the nomination.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Were you with me that this was a fun romp late in the summer, or did you share the opinion of my aunt that it was "too slow?"  While Alicia Vikander's movie star seems firmly set, where do you see the careers of Cavill, Hammer, and Debicki going after this?  And who else thinks that Joanna Johnston should (or will) gain a nomination at year's end?  Sound off in the comments!

OVP: The Great Gatsby (2013)

Film: The Great Gatsby (2013)
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Oscar History: 2 nominations/2 wins (Best Costume Design*, Best Art Direction*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the problems with making a movie once every six years or so is that the expectations game is stacked against you.  Remember when Kimberly Pierce spent nine years waiting to follow-up Boys Don't Cry?  The expectations game is too intense, and I think that's something that Baz Luhrmann has fallen into in recent years.  After the epic poetry of Romeo & Juliet, followed by his magnum opus Moulin Rouge!, he spent seven years in the wilderness (considering the locale of his next picture, probably literally in some cases), then made the bloated and overlong Australia.  He waited another five years and this past year came out with The Great Gatsby, which thanks to its lavish costumes and sets, is part of our OVP.

(Spoilers Ahead...though you seriously have never read this book?) The problem with the film isn't that he's taking too long, but in some ways, that Luhrmann shouldn't have this much time to make a film.  This is a director who deals with extravagance to the nth degree, and occasionally it takes away from his overall plot.  What made something like Moulin Rouge so incredible wasn't just the baller sets and the cavalcade of Nicole Kidman costumes, but it was also that there was an incredible, strong love story at the center of it, anchoring it down.  The problem with Luhrmann and The Great Gatsby is there simply isn't, and everything in this film (which, like Australia, is overlong) reflects that he doesn't really understand the book.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's movie has been called unfilmable, and I don't believe that because, barring something like the dictionary, all books are filmable.  They're plotted stories and that translates to the big screen.  When people say that something is unfilmable, what they mean to say is you cannot traditionally film the movie, which is absolutely true of this Trimalchio in West Egg.

The problem is that Gatsby seems very much like a love story, but it's of course not one, at least not one we're used to seeing.  Gatsby is in love with Daisy, and they used to be together, but Daisy is now with Tom and so Gatsby tries to win her back through extravagance and romantic gestures.  It's a pretty customary plot, except Daisy isn't worth all of these gestures.  Fitzgerald gets it-Daisy isn't worth any of this.  She's a shallow girl willing to let Gatsby take the fall for her crimes, even though all she's done throughout her life is just love him when it was convenient.  This means that the love story element never really rings true, and instead you have a story about a man misguided by obsession, a couple consumed by money and power and greed, and a narrator, possibly deceiving us by claiming to be interested in women but clearly desperately in love with the title character.

You get none of that in Luhrmann's fantasy, which, when it's not trying to get you to buy Lana del Rey songs on iTunes or showing another gigantic set or costume idea (though, particularly in the latter case, there are inspired moments like Gatsby's gorgeous pink suit) it's trying to sell, sell, sell that love story.  Maybe Luhrmann would have gained more if he was a director that deals with subtle, but he's not.  He can't do anything unless it's up to eleven, and that doesn't work with a delicate tale like Gatsby.  Perhaps one of the reasons no one responds well to this book being filmed is that the only two major forces to attach themselves to the project are Luhrmann and Francis Ford Coppola, another figure not known for the breezy touch.  These two men are excellent filmmakers, but you need to give them a source material suited for what they are tackling.  In this case, you need someone who will draw out the homoerotic nature of Nick's relationship with Gatsby, the fact that Gatsby is a misguided fool, and that Daisy may well love Tom more than Gatsby, but cannot completely betray her schoolgirl fantasy.  That's a movie-a pretty great one-but you need someone who doesn't get distracted by the romantic gestures and all of that aesthetic symbolism.

It's also worth noting, and I got into an argument with a friend about this but it's true-the cast is far too old to be playing this part.  Leo DiCaprio would have made a superb Jay Gatsby...ten years ago.  The same can be said for Tobey Maguire and Nick.  DiCaprio, now at almost forty, is still quite beautiful in the way Gatsby is supposed to be, but a courser, guy of about forty beautiful, and can no longer convincingly play a man consumed by love without any sort of reservation.  Maguire is also far too old to be learning such basic lessons about the ways of the world.  Carey Mulligan is the only one of the four leads who is remotely age appropriate for the film, but Mulligan's not great with whispy characters-she needs someone with a bit of spine to sell it.

We'll be getting into the costumes and art direction in a few weeks when we tackle the 2013 OVP (we'll be doing quite a bit more of the 2009 OVP this weekend), but until then-what did you think of Luhrmann's latest?  Do you agree that it was a mess, or was it a mess that you could love?  And would you have doubled Catherine Martin's Oscar count?  Share in the comments!