300: The Great Gatsby

[00:00:00] Chapter 12, Classic Film. Let's get into The Great Gatsby from 1974. This one is directed by Jay Clayton. Script is written by Francis Ford Coppola, fun fact. Stars Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Scott Wilson, Sam Waterston.

[00:00:20] And the synopsis is a Midwesterner becomes fascinated with his rich neighbor who obsesses over his lost love. As I talked about recently on the regular show, my wife and I did rewatch The Great Gatsby, the 2013 one, which I love. I'm a big defender of.

[00:00:40] The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorite novels. I love that novel and I encourage you to read it if you haven't. But I really do love that movie despite some minor flaws with it.

[00:00:50] I had seen this one probably maybe in middle school or high school around the time that we had to read the book in school. When it comes to classic literature, I really like classic literature. Not to say I'm reading it all the time in my downtime.

[00:01:05] However, I really like the classics and I love when they try and make it into films and television like anything from Tolstoy or Fitzgerald, anybody. I really love those kinds of stories. And I think that when done right, you can make a piece of classic literature into something

[00:01:22] amazing as it has been done. But also, you can really fumble terribly, as spoiler as I think this one is. I don't hate the movie totally. I've seen it maybe three times over the years.

[00:01:36] I always want to like it more because of how much I love the novel and just that overall story. But the biggest issue with the movie is that it's just fairly dull. It's kind of forgettable. Robert Redford is a little too closed off in a way.

[00:01:53] Especially in the 2013 one, DiCaprio, you can really see those wheels turning in his mind and all that emotion is front and center. Whereas Robert Redford plays it a little bit more stoic and harder to read.

[00:02:05] And for this case, that doesn't really work because Gatsby, you're really supposed to be kind of fascinated, wonder what's going on in his head. At least that's what I think of when I think of Gatsby. Mia Farrow, she's very good in this.

[00:02:19] However, the styles of acting between her and Redford are very different. I don't know exactly what that is, but there's something where they don't totally click. And while the 2013 one, everything is very melodramatic and over the top, at least in some ways it's balanced.

[00:02:37] And in this one, they can never really find the right footing. At least that's what I gather. And it does look really good. It has that sort of hazy memory aesthetic to it, which I really like.

[00:02:48] The colors are good, the costume, production design, everything is very top notch in that way. So visually it's good to look at, but it is a bit of a slog to get through. If you like the novel, check it out.

[00:03:00] It's not the worst that it could be, and I think there are worse ones out there, at least from what I've heard. But it is a little overrated to me. I don't think there are a lot of people praising this movie super highly, but I think some

[00:03:13] people say this one is better than the 2013 one, which I highly disagree with. And that's too bad because I want to see every kind of interpretation of The Great Gatsby possible. I want to see different kinds of versions and visions, everything like that, because I

[00:03:30] am fascinated by that story. And it's too bad that this one doesn't really hold up. I don't know if it ever did, but it is too bad because I want to love it every time.

[00:03:40] So if you want to give it a chance, if you've seen the 2013 one and you want to check out more, give it a shot. You may end up really liking it. I don't know, but I would just read the novel first, more than anything, because it's a

[00:03:50] really amazing novel and quite brief. It's in and out. It's not one of those 800-page novels. It's pretty easy to read and there's a lot to think about while you're reading it. I might actually reread it sometime soon. I've kind of been in the mood.

[00:04:05] Other than that, good performances besides Mia Farrow and Robert Redford. The main or one of the main ideas in the movie in terms of these sort of tragedy characters, especially when it comes to Gatsby, and that's more so in the 2013 one where he's the most

[00:04:25] hopeful, the most optimistic person, and then he ends up getting blamed for everything. There's a little bit of that in this, but I feel like it leads more towards a fairly silly uninteresting romance.

[00:04:39] The romance is in the 2013 one for sure, but I feel like Baz Luhrmann had a little bit of a better grip on what makes Gatsby Gatsby, not just let's make timeless classical romance.

[00:04:53] This may sound harsh, but I think it's absolutely true and it's probably one of the best examples of this. This feels like the kind of adaptation that a teacher would show you in school, like an English class.

[00:05:05] Like, all right, high school, ninth grade, let's read The Great Gatsby and then let's watch this movie so you can get a better understanding of it. I think that is the worst kind of one to be for the most part because not say you should

[00:05:17] show the 2013 one instead, but this is the kind of movie where it's so academic and kind of lifeless in a way at the same time to where this, and I think I did actually watch

[00:05:29] this one probably in high school when I was so uninterested, even though I love the book, I felt like it kind of ruined things for me and that book at the time. So definitely has that sort of feel and really not in a good way.

[00:05:42] The script, as I said, was written by Francis Ford Coppola, but I did hear that there were a lot of changes to his script, which I trust him with a script for sure considering his

[00:05:52] body of work and I would be curious to see if that movie had been made with that original script, whatever changes were made, but don't think we'll ever see that. Anyways, that one is a three out of five.