Who could be better than Baz Luhrmann?

The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby (1925) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I found out about a new Baz Luhrmann film coming out and at first I was pretty excited. I then found out that it was based on one of my favourite books The Great Gatsby and was filled with a feeling of trepidation and concern that one of my favourite tales could be marred by a film makeover.

The Great Gatsby takes place during a prosperous time in American History. In 1922, America has fully recovered from the First World War, and is enjoying prosperity during the “roaring” 1920s. The economy soared and emotions ran high. Yet, at the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, was gaining traction. A chain of events take place involving love, parties, death and murder follow creating what many people believe to be the great American novel.

But how will this be translated into film? There is always the danger when approaching a classic and well loved story that the feeling and ideas that readers have created around the story will be destroyed as soon as you add lights, camera and action. Thankfully Baz Luhrmann has had experience of handling this issue before when he directed Romeo and Juliet. This film managed to bridge the divide and bring the story into the modern day but still retaining a lot of its credibility. For this project a fresh faced Leonardo Dicaprio played Romeo to great effect.

Leonardo Dicaprio is to play the title role of Gatsby in this outing with Mr Luhrmann and the rest of the cast is also quite impressive including Carey Mulligan who will play Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire who will play Nick Carraway. Hopefully Baz Luhrmann will be able to work his magic again in creating an incredible piece of work that will spark interest about classic tales that people may have otherwise missed.

The film is to be released in December 2012 so there is a bit of a wait to go but you can be sure that many people will be waiting to see if Baz Luhrmann can create another beautiful modern take on a classic.

Are there any classic stories that you would like to see taken to the silver screen? Do you think Baz Luhrmann will create a believable Gatsby?

No related posts.