The Great Gatsby

"Life lived in fear is a life half-lived" are the words that grace the opening of the film.
The film begins in much of the same style as Oz: the Great and Powerful, with grainy black and white opening credits before the lush color is shown. And the film is so lush.
Nick Carraway (Tobey MaGuire) is in a sanitarium. It is 1929. He believes his fall began the summer he moved to New York. He rents a small home that used to belong to the groundskeeper and begins a job selling bonds. His cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan) lives near-by. She married into extreme money in the form of polo player, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and wants for nothing. Servants waits on them hand and foot. There is also one of Luhrmann's signature weird scenes when Nick first sees Daisy, with the silk curtains billowing over her in the wind. Daisy even mentions that she is happy her baby (the long unseen Pammy) is a girl and hopes for her to be a fool.
The Buchanan marriage is not a happy one, with Tom cheating on her with the mechanic's (Jason Clarke's) wife, Myrtle (Isla Fisher). Pretty but a floozy. They go off into the city where Tom tries to hook Nick up with Myrtle's sister, Catherine (Adelaide Clemons) and they do hook up that one time as Nick is truly drunk.
And then there is Gatsby, who throws the horribly elaborate parties with tons of glitter, both in the air and on the dresses and confetti, music and booze, despite prohibition being in effect, but that issue is addressed early in the film. Then Gatsby announces himself as the fireworks blast in the distance. His entrance could not have been anymore grand.
But Gatsby (top-billed Leonardo DiCaprio) has a plan and that plan is to get Daisy back. He was with her before heading off to war, but now he wants her back. Everything he has done has been for her. She's the reason he threw all these parties, just so she would show up at one of them.
Gatsby has Nick invite her over for tea, but he is the one who fixes up Nick's tiny house and again puts on a show. I did think it was a bit much that he couldn't face her so he walked outside in the rain and then made his entrance. He and Daisy try and pick up things where they left off, but five years have passed. Daisy can't just pick up things and run off with him though she wants to. What Gatsby wants her to do is tell Tom that she never loved him, which is a lie. She totally did love him at one point.
Then comes the moment of the undoing. Daisy has Nick and her good friend, Jordan (Elizabeth Debicki) for moral support but she can't do it and stumbles to light her cigarette causing Gatsby to do it for her instead. Tom figures it out. They then go into the city and Tom stops to get some gas and hears that Myrtle and her husband are moving west. Nick, as the narrator, says that just an hour ago, Tom was secure with both his wife and mistress, but now both were leaving him.
Tom does not take the news well and Daisy can't lie to him as Gatsby asks too much; he can't relive the past, though he is convinced that he can. The fight scene is especially well-acted with DiCaprio truly shaking in his boots.
On the way home, a horrible accident occurs. Gatsby's car hits Myrtle, fatally killing her. Tom is devastated and comforts her husband, George (Jason Clarke), saying that it was Gatsby's car and Gatsby deserves to be punished for his crimes. But only Nick learns the truth. Gatsby wasn't driving; it was Daisy, in a plot twist that shocked me and I read the book in High School. Granted it was six years ago, but I did read it. Gatsby is punished. George shoots him in the back as Gatsby gets out the pool. He was waiting for Daisy to call him with her final decision.
Despite Gatsby's lavish well-attended parties, no one comes to his funeral and it hurts Nick tons. Daisy and Tom retreat back into their wealth and remain unpunished for their crimes. They head off somewhere else. Nick is left with the truth, that Gatsby conned his life into the wealth he now has and he also has a vast wealth with grand furniture.
Though the film ends on a sad note, do the characters deserve happiness? Nick does, but he doesn't get it, taken in under Gatsby's charm, just as Daisy was, though probably more so. Nick will be punished for liking
Gatsby, yet Daisy is unpunished for the same thing and so much more.
That being said, the film was excellent with great editing in a difficult film to edit, but it is done seamlessly. The cinematography and set decoration and costumes are also excellent. Superb actually. I also liked the typically odd blending of modern pop music into a movie that occurs decades ago, but it worked. Maybe if someone other than Luhrmann was directing it, that wouldn't have been the case, but I liked it nevertheless. In fact, this is easily the best film I've seen so far this year. It felt much shorter than it's nearly two and a half hours, and from what my friend, who read the book much more recently than me, said that the film follows the book pretty well. That is something I always like. All book and film lovers should watch this film. Grade: A