|
The Great Gatsby (A&E)Rating:
Release Date: 30 January, 2001 Retail Price: $19.95 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $1.96! Cast: Complete Cast (9 total) |
The Great Gatsby (A&E) Reviews
"Hey Old Sport"
I liked the actors but hated the story. All they ever do is get drunk and have partys. If you have not read the book you will not know what is going on in till about the middle of the movie.
Gatsby as Godfather
This wild shot at Fitzgerald's masterpiece sees it all as a sort of proto-Godfather saga, 60 years ahead of its time. Beautifully costumed and with a sharp and accurate period look, this British TV version is a very distanced interpretation (if you can call it an interpretation, rather than an abject misunderstanding) of Gatsby. The take is pure gangland style -- an element certainly in the book, but which hardly subsumes it all -- or ought to, anyway. The story is really about romantic extravagance and earnestness; that takes more than mere costuming and sets, but actors with a lot of heart. The men here have no appeal whatsoever; they're all thugs. Mira Sorvino's Daisy, however weird, is presented as some sort of heroine -- about as far from Fitzgerald's intent as you can get. The dialogue is all accurate, mind you, and the story line is not significantly altered. Simply, this total misunderstanding of Gatsby is an object lesson on how mere "textual faithfulness" is far from enough to properly mount a literary work as film.
You can't blame our cousins across the Atlantic River though. The tight, terse Fitzgerald text is obviously based on the reader sharing certain cultural assumptions; this version exposes that fact about the book, and to that extent is useful. And the Brits never understood Scott Fitzgerald from the get-go, though he has always bugged them. The late great British literary critic Cyril Connelly summed it up perhaps best, "Scott Fitzgerald is an American imposition, and I am beginning to resent him." This was in the 60s, in the heights of the Fitzgerald revival which continues to this day.
The film still rates 3 stars because -- paired off against the more famous Redford Gatsby (which is also quite textually accurate) -- it presents fascinating issues of textual interpretation and personal and cultural orientation. Know the book well though, and see the other film first before coming to this.
More Customer Reviews (23 total)
You like The Great Gatsby (A&E)?
|
© 2004, 2005, 2006 DVD Booty | Don't Plunder Our Cache of Booty, Matey!
Hosting made possible by donations from Cash At Once, Debt Relief Information, and Flex Your Paychecks
