NEW YORK -- Women in bob cuts and extensive hair plumage and men in bowties and exaggerated facial expressions were dancing and throwing their arms in the air, 1920’s style, amid the crowd of Manolo-clad partygoers, who were eating seafood hors d’oeuvres and snapping photos with their iPhones.
It was a fitting set of contrasts Wednesday at the Plaza Hotel and its premiere party for Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D version of “The Great Gatsby.” A few hours earlier at Lincoln Center, a similar dichotomy played out on screen, where Jay Gatsby's West Egg was exactingly re-created--with the help of some 21st century hip-hop and "Avatar"-style technology--in Luhrmann's spin on the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic.
"Fitzgerald's book is great because it can be done many times in many different places in many different ways," Luhrmann said at the screening, looking as if he wasn’t sure whether he should explain his movie but deciding maybe it was best to do so anyway.
PHOTOS: 'The Great Gatsby' premiere
The director, already bearing a reputation for putting modern twists on classic eras (“Moulin Rouge,” “Romeo + Juliet”) had been doing his share of defending since he first announced he would be making “Gatsby” back in the fall of 2008.
As the financial crisis exploded, the country was dealing with the hangover from its own Gilded Age. This movie, Luhrmann had told me in an interview at the time, would be the jeremiad it needed. "If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money' they're not going to want to see it,” he said. "But if you reflected it on another time, I think they'd be willing to see it."
Whether that message will land with audiences here remains a question. There is little hint of an impending Depression in Luhrmann's film, which plunges viewers into the world of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), and the trio he observes in Eggs East and West: Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) and Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio, making great sport of phrases like "old sport"). The first half of the movie concentrates on setting up the glamorous, garish world of Gatsby and his parties, while the latter section ups the emotional stakes as Tom and Gatsby vie for Daisy’s affection — a portrayal that, as Hollywood has done across many eras, puts the love story front and center.
“I was reminded of Fitzgerald's phrase," Luhrmann said in introducing his new interpretation. "He said I wanted to make something new and extraordinary and valuable.... That was our guiding light.”
