However, the film is not perfect. Tobey Maguire’s Nick Carraway feels oddly wooden, acting more as a tourist than a participant. Furthermore, the decision to frame the entire story as a flashback from a sanitarium (where Nick is writing a memoir to cure his alcoholism) adds a layer of framing that feels unnecessary.
But the film’s greatest triumph is its final five minutes. As DiCaprio watches the green light fade, Luhrmann finally quiets the chaos. The music stops. The camera slows down. We are left with the words of Fitzgerald, spoken verbatim over a snowy dock:
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."
In that moment, Luhrmann stops trying to reinvent Fitzgerald and simply serves him. It is a devastatingly quiet ending to a deafeningly loud movie. The Great Gatsby -2013-
Let’s address the elephant in the room—or rather, the elephant wearing a diamond-studded collar. This is not your high school English teacher’s Gatsby. Luhrmann does not do subtlety. When Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) arrives at West Egg, the party sequences feel less like the 1920s and more like a futuristic rave edited by a hyperactive DJ.
The colors are neon. The camera spins. Confetti flies directly into the lens. It is loud, fast, and disorienting. And that is precisely the point.
Fitzgerald wrote about the "foul dust" that floated in the wake of dreams. Luhrmann visualizes that dust as literal glitter. By cranking the volume of the parties up to 11, he makes the eventual silence of the third act deafening. You can’t appreciate the loneliness of Jay Gatsby until you’ve felt the migraine of his parties. However, the film is not perfect
In 2013, critical response was mixed. The New Yorker called it “an over-stuffed, empty spectacle.” The Guardian praised it as “a party that reveals its own decay.” On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a middling 48% critic score but an 85% audience approval. Audiences understood what critics missed: Gatsby is a story about a performance. Luhrmann’s style—the quick cuts, the CGI parties, the anachronistic music—is the cinematic equivalent of Gatsby’s manufactured persona.
Over time, The Great Gatsby -2013- has undergone a significant reevaluation. On TikTok and Instagram, zoomers have rediscovered the film’s aesthetic, creating “Gatsby-core” trends. The film’s themes of economic inequality, performative luxury, and the impossible dream of love resonate deeply in a post-2010s world. It is no longer seen as a failure; it is seen as a prophecy.
Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a would-be writer and recovering alcoholic, recounts the summer of 1922 from a sanitarium. Living on West Egg, Long Island, he becomes fascinated by his neighbor, the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). Gatsby throws legendary parties in the hope that his lost love, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), who lives across the bay with her brutish husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), might wander in. What follows is a tragic love story and a scathing critique of the jazz age’s decadence. But the film’s greatest triumph is its final five minutes
If nothing else, The Great Gatsby is a visual feast. Luhrmann does not just direct a scene; he curates it. The parties at the Gatsby mansion are explosions of confetti, pyrotechnics, and color—a chaotic spectacle that perfectly mirrors the dizzying, hedonistic excess described in the novel. The use of 3D is surprisingly effective, adding depth to the sweeping shots of the Long Island Sound and making the "Valley of Ashes" feel truly oppressive.
However, the visual flair can be overwhelming. The first hour is cut at a frantic, music-video pace, which serves to disorient the audience just as Nick is disoriented, but it risks exhausting the viewer before the emotional core of the story takes hold.
This is where the film faces its biggest criticism. Luhrmann spells out the subtext that Fitzgerald left simmering beneath the surface. The film literally spells Gatsby’s dreams onto the screen. While this makes the story accessible to modern audiences, it strips away some of the novel's elegance.
However, the final act redeems much of this. The pacing slows, the colors drain, and the tragedy unfolds with the weight it deserves. The scene where Gatsby demands Daisy say she "never loved Tom" is as tense and uncomfortable as any thriller.
Director: Baz Luhrmann Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton Genre: Drama / Romance