The Great Gatsby

A film set in New York in 1922. Nick comes to the city to go into bonds. He takes a small house on Long Island and music comes every weekend from the vast mansion next door. His neighbour is Gatsby. Nobody has seen him, everybody tells a story about him, and people come to the parties uninvited. Nick receives an invitation. Gatsby wants to meet him because Nick's cousin Daisy lives across the bay. From there the film is about what a wait was for. Gatsby has been waiting five years for the same woman, and his fortune, his house and his parties were all built for it. The meeting happens. Then Tom steps in and everything comes out in a hotel room. What the narrative is interested in is not love but class: both sides in the film are rich but one is new money; the narrative keeps reminding you of the difference and draws a line nobody crosses. The green light, the advertisement with the spectacles and the valley of ashes are images taken straight from the book and the film brings them forward. The telling is excessive. The camera never stops, the parties come with fireworks, and the music is chosen from present-day pop and rap rather than the jazz of the period; that is its most argued-over decision. It was shot for three-dimensional presentation. The source is F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. The film won Academy Awards for costume and production design. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Elizabeth Debicki are in the cast. Baz Luhrmann directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes visually excessive period films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the book's tone; the novel is cold and distant and the film talks loudly throughout.