It was the bee's knees! It was the cat's meow!
It was a pretty good movie all in all. It was very faithful to the story, even if some of the music numbers were a little imaginative and anachronistic. But if you wander into a Baz Lurhmann directed film and don't think you're going to get anachronitic, you've wandered into the wrong theater. Did the music bother me? Not at all! I thought it was very entertaining - some of it was hip hop but with a jazzy tilt.
Leonardo DiCaprio was very good as Jay Gatsby. The boyish hopefulness really shined through. Like all truly great movie actors, he conveyed many of his mood changes just through his eyes, and subtle changes in his facial expression. Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan was incredibly insipid and vapid, but that is what the character called for. Love is a strange and uncaring beast, because practically there is no way someone as dynamic as Gatsby should be obsessed with her. She is pretty but empty. To me, the very best performance was by Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, Daisy's mega-wealthy husband, played with malicious fervor. He made you understand the truly corrupt power of these people who can do whatever they want and so casually play with other people's lives.
Any great work of literature will have multiple themes, like a kaleidoscope in what you pick up and see. But clearly the dominant theme of The Great Gatsby is disillusionment, the corrosive effects of greed and money, and the growing income inequality of that time. An income inequality and greed that eventually led to the Great Depression.
But this is not some distant artifact of a time long ago. We are living it again today. Income inequality is as severe if not more severe now than it was then. And the gap has been growing. And many of us seem completely unfocused on it. We would still rather rail at someone getting filet mignon on food stamps than a corporation exploiting workers here in the country and overseas, where factories collapse and human beings work endless hours for pennies.
Statistics from Business Insider, from a study done by professors Dan Ariely and Michael Norton:
The Top 1% of Americans own a staggering 40% of the entire country's wealth!
The top 1%, in fact, own more than the average Americans (Republicans and Democrats alike) think that the whole top 20% should own.
Again, the top 1% of Americans own a staggering 40% of the country's net worth.
The bottom 80%, meanwhile — 8 out of 10 Americans — own only 7% of America's net worth.
The richest 1% of wage earners now take home 24% of the country's total earnings. This compares to only 9% four decades ago.
The top 1% own 50% of the country's financial assets.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wealth-and-income-inequality-in-america-2013-4?op=1#ixzz2TMAqpoRe
Is this the way it always is? NO! Is this the way it has to be? NO!
We all want some kind of curve upwards, for hard work and effort to mean something. But this? This is ridiculous, and devastating to our ability to be a free, mobile and democratic society!
We can enjoy the drama and music and characters of The Great Gatsby. But listen to the story carefully. We don't have to live with The Great Gapsby. We can do something about it if we have the will.
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