Fake Concept Movie

 

Summary 

The Great Gatsby recounts the story of an impeded love between a man, Gatsby, and a woman, Daisy. However, this film deals with a much larger subject matter than is superficially understood. It approaches the decline of the American dream in the 1920s, an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess, the hollowness of the newly formed upper class in contrast to the old aristocracy, the theme of lies and deceit and the idea of social stratification in American life between the rich who were born into wealth, those who have just recently acquired money, and the poor.

Further Analysis

From Luhrmann’s reinterpretation of Fitzgerald’s original novel, we can clearly understand the plot, as well as some motifs and themes, tackled by the book. In fact, Luhrmann even seems to overindulge the viewers through Nick Carraway’s narration, which reveals an excessive amount of information about Jay Gatsby’s past and present life, almost destroying that distinction between façade and reality. To give an example, when Nick Carraway yells “you can’t recreate the past Gatsby!,” Lurhmann reveals the main theme of the story: Gatsby’s inability to live in the present and restrict his vision of reality, causing him to live an illusion. Meanwhile, however, Luhrmann certainly underplays certain elements of Fitzgerald’s concerns in his new film. While Fitzgerald seems to critique the upper class luxury of the 1920s, Luhrmann further embellishes it, sympathizing with and sharing Gatsby’s dream. Unlike the previous reinterpretations, who failed to translate the book’s magic to the screen, Luhrmann’s version introduces a new form of cacophony of sound and image, emphasizing the beauty of the 1920s and “Greatness” of Jay Gatsby, restoring the novel’s vitality from the earlier adaptations. Nevertheless, Luhrman remains relatively faithful to the decorum of the novel. For example, as a non-sensualist romantic, Fitzgerald does not include descriptions of Daisy’s and Gatsby’s sexual intimacy. In a similar fashion, Luhrmann, while providing the lovers with mild affection, only shows the two protagonists kissing and a brief montage of bedroom shots.

The connection of the movie to my concept

From a singularly formal examination of The Great Gatsby, we can certainly recognize its relationship with the concept of embellishment. Although the excessive saturation of color, the addition of scintillating surfaces and hyper luxurious costumes, the use of contemporary pop music and the raucous and frantic appearance of the scenes could be interpreted as evidence of the director’s interest in bombast rather than telling the story, such techniques give the film a magical and dream-like aura, making the period of the 1920s unusually appealing to today’s audience. The lavishness and imposingness of the garments in the film has prompted my desire to create an equally imposing, crystal-like armor to strongly emphasize the idea of extreme Embelishment, exaggeration, which is characteristic of Luhrmann’s scenes, and Deco extravagance.  The Great Gatsby is finally associated with the concept of Façade in that it is built around lies, uncertainty and appearance. Although all main characters are dishonest to themselves and to others, the illusive character of Jay Gatsby is the main source of deceit in the story. Creating a fake image of himself as a well-educated and extremely wealthy man to impress Daisy, the love of his life, he fabricates a somewhat intriguing and believable story about his life, preventing others to gather two much information about him. In reality however, Gatsby’s image of himself is inconsistent with the actual facts of his life. Therefore, this story represents Gatsby as a fraud: an eternally mysterious and unopened fraud.  Nevertheless, Gatsby’s aim was to try to embellish reality, convincing himself of its concreteness through material beautification.