My favorite film of 2013, the severely underrated, The Great Gatsby finally arrives on Blu-ray 3D this week in a nice, full featured set.
Movie
I don’t think I’ve ever read The Great Gatsby. I know it is required reading in a lot of High School English Lit classes, but I’m fairly certain, surprisingly enough, that I didn’t take English Lit – not even in College (I took French and Spanish instead). Always the practical one, who knew that I’d end up being “forced” to read all the classics anyway?
After a string of misfires (I hated Shutter Island and Inception) Leonardo DiCaprio returns to form. He is perfect as Gatsby. He deserves an Oscar nomination for this performance. Gatsby is a complicated, yet simple man. His entire existence is his desire to get the girl, Daisy (Carey Mulligan) that he foolishly let go of.
This is a role that was tailor made for DiCaprio. If DiCaprio wasn’t already an A list mega star, this movie would have made him one. He just oozes off the screen and is simply radiant here (can I use the word radiant to talk about a guy?).
In any other hands, Daisy could easily be hated and come across as shallow, naive, and as someone just going through life, but Mulligan brings a lot of hidden layers to Daisy. You can see the inner conflict through her expressive eyes.
As wild and over the top as Moulin Rouge Director Baz Luhrmann usually is; The Great Gatsby is his most assured, straightforward, gimmick free (not counting 3D) film to date. From a pure story telling and directing standpoint it is by the numbers. There are very few scenes that made me feel like I took a bad acid trip. Even the party scenes are beautifully shot and framed here.
Much has been written about the modern mixing of Hip Hop with 20’s era Jazz and how it wouldn’t work. Luhrmann actually did an amazing job of not overdoing the gimmick. Yes, it is noticeable, but he uses it very sparingly, so it never took me out of the movie.
There was one scene when they were on the bridge and they passed a car that had rich black people in and they were playing Jay-Z’s Izzo (HOVA). It was odd and random just to have rich black people appear out of nowhere. I loved Luhrmann use of various versions Lana Del Rey’s song Young and Beautiful in the love scenes. It really added texture and emotion to the romance.
One of the most beautiful moments in the movie comes when Gatsby is lamenting everything that he’s lost, and Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway) says, “You can’t repeat the past” and Gatsby responds with an earnest “Of course you can old sport,” such a simple but impactful moment.
Generally, I’m not a fan of narration, but Maguire does an amazing job with the lyrical prose used in this movie. Maguire gives a mature, nuanced performance here where you can really see his love and infatuation for Gatsby grow while his distaste for his friend Tom Buchannan (a wonderfully evil Joel Edgerton) increases. At times it almost seemed as if Nick wanted to jump Gatsby’s bones.
This is my favorite film of 2013. It hit all my buttons – beautifully shot, very hopeful (but with an ultimately sad end), and had some flashes of brilliant prose.
Video/Audio/Packaging
This movie received a lot of flack because it was pulled from its original release date and delayed by 6 months so that Luhrmann could add 3D. I’m here to tell you the 3D really doesn’t ad much to this film, yeah there is some good depth to it, but it seems like a gimmick and pretty pointless. I preferred the regular 2D Blu-ray version.
The quality on the Blu-ray 3D is solid, if I’m looking directly at it, however if I lay down on my couch it become basically unwatchable. Lack of viewing angles is one of the drawbacks to using Passive 3D technology, but normally they aren’t this off.
In this day and age, can we get rid of letterboxing? Please? I have a large screen television for a reason; I don’t want half my screen taken up with black bars. The Blu-ray 3D would have been more eye-popping if it used full screen. Other than the letterboxing issue, the transfer is almost flawless. There are a couple of scenes that purposefully has some grain to help establish the time period.
At $29 (Amazon price) this is the most “expensive” Blu-ray 3D set that I’ve purchased all year and the packaging is cheap as heck. There are three discs and the Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D discs don’t even have individual holders – just two discs slapped together.
There’s no artwork on the two Blu-ray disks, just Gatsby written on it in a fuggly font. Looks like some amateur bootleg disk, not a professional $30 Blu-ray 3D set. What was WHV thinking? Oh, I know, “We’ll do a better job with an extended version in a few months.”
Extras
The Extras on this set are nicely laid out and contain a lot of solid information about every aspect of creating this movie. I kind of wish there was just one full length documentary (broken into individual featurettes), because it felt like I was hunting and pecking through the menu.
It was weird that the Blu-ray 3D trailer is on the Blu-ray disc, but not the actual Blu-ray 3D itself. I mean what do I get out of seeing an ad for Blu-ray 3D in 2D?
- There is One Trailer for Gravity
- 1926 The Great Gatsby Trailer (1 min, HD) – This long lost trailer is a fun look at the old silent film classic.
- Within and Without with Tobey Maguire (8 mins, HD) – Tobey Maguire brings his camera on set for some rare moments with Co-Stars and Director Baz Luhrmann
- The Swinging Sounds of Gatsby (12 Min, HD) – This feature looks at the amazing, eclectic score that blends the sound of Jazy-Z, Bryan Ferry and other contemporary artists with classic 20s era jazz
- The Jazz Age (15 Min, HD) – A nice, detailed look at the history of the Jazz Age and the parties that inspired it.
- Razzle Dazzle: The Fashion of the 20s (15, HD) – This is exactly what the title says, a look at the fashions of the 20s.
- Fitzgerald’s Visual Poetry (7 min, HD) – Baz talks about the importance of using 3D for this film to create “poetic glu.”
- Gatsby Revealed (30 Min, HD) – This is essentially a 30 minute documentary (broken up into several pieces) that delves into various aspects of how various scenes were created and staged. Very well done.
- Deleted Scenes – There are three deleted scenes, one of which includes an Alternate Ending. The Alternate ending is interesting because it shows Gatsby’s father coming to pay his respects and there was a romance between Nick and Jordan that unfortunately got cut because Baz didn’t have enough time to fully flesh it out.
- Digital UV Copy – After spending a lot of time complaining about UltraViolet and clutching onto iTunes, I’m now fully onboard and love the idea of it. When UV first started, my primary issue was all the various sign-ups and the fact that I could not play the digital files anywhere. In the last 8 months UV has become almost as ubiquitous as Netflix.I can get UV through Vudu, CinemaNow and Flixter and all those apps are available on every connected device (TVs, Blu-ray Players, Game Consoles) I have.As much as I love iTunes, it annoys me that I had to buy two Apple TVs just to watch my digital copies on my TV.With that said, I hate having a fractured digital library – I have 300 UVs and 100 iTunes now, so I wish studios would provide both UV and iTunes copies. It is also annoying that Digital Copies don’t include the extra features and that services like Vudu sell bonus materials separately and that iTunes Extras don’t even work on Apple TV.
Conclusion
This movie is the ultimate love story about a man that would and did do everything he could to gain back what he lost. Having never read the book, I can’t comment on what has been changed but it is a movie that everyone should enjoy. This Blu-ray 3D package is disappointing, I’m not sure what I expected, but I wanted more than was delivered. Even so, it is hard to be mad when I love this movie as much as I do. The sloppy packaging, the outrageous price and the annoying letterboxing are the only things holding this back from an A+.
Grades
- Movie – A+
- Video – B+
- Audio – B+
- Extras – C
Final Overall Grade – B+