If you’re going to see “The Great Gatsby” because you can’t get enough of Leonardo DiCaprio, save yourself the ticket money. Sit home, make your own popcorn and watch “Titanic” one more time. At least if you do that, you’ll get almost a full three hours and 17 minutes of him. If you decide to see “Gatsby,” go prepared; DiCaprio doesn’t even make an appearance until 45 minutes into the movie.
Tobey Maguire plays the part of Nick Carraway, the man who becomes an unexpected friend and facilitator to Jay Gatsby as he works toward the only thing that means anything to him, getting the girl.
The girl, in this case, Daisy Buchanan, played by Carey Mulligan. Five years earlier, Daisy and Jay met and fell in love, but Jay was called off to war, and when he returned, he didn’t feel he was worthy of her love, given that he was penniless.
Daisy goes on to seal herself in a marriage with a very wealthy, yet philandering man. Joel Edgerton brings the character of Tom Buchanan to life by infusing him with just enough slime to make viewers cringe.
Daisy’s husband is a typical skirt-chaser and having an affair with Myrtle. Played by Isla Fisher, Myrtle is too far beneath Tom for him to make an honest woman of her, so she languishes in a loveless marriage to a man who beats her.
In the meantime, Gatsby spends his years getting rich and learning to pass as sophisticated. The only end Gatsby can accept is one that finds him and his love together in the splendor he has created for them.
He throws lavish parties that are attended by thousands in the hopes that one day Daisy will wander into his home. Eventually, with the help of Carraway, Daisy and Gatsby come face to face and very close to a fairy tale happily ever after.
Gatsby just needs her to tell Tom she never loved him, and there lies the sticking point. She can’t because she did.
Gatsby sustains his life on hope. He’s convinced that all he has to do is believe he’ll have what he wants and it will come to him. When Daisy can’t paint the picture the way Gatsby always dreamed it would look, he prefers to hold out for his vision.
Through a series of twists, the film takes some fast-paced turns right at the end that might make a few movie-goers gasp.
Glass half-empty people, beware. If you’re a pessimistic person, this film might be a classic tragedy for you. You may walk away muttering clichés like, “The good guy never wins,” or “Only a sucker believes in hope.”
However, if you’re an optimist, you might see the movie for what it is, a reminder that just because we don’t get things delivered exactly as we imagined them, doesn’t mean we didn’t get them at all.
According to Carraway, Gatsby was great because he always had hope. Viewers will probably agree, though, that what was truly great about him wasn’t that he got what he wanted most in life. Rather, it was because in the end, he got the one thing that’s worth more than anything.
He found one person who saw true, heartbreaking value in his existence.