Great Gatsby, The (4k Ultra HD BD) [4K UHD]

I didn't think Leo could be as good as Robert Redford. He was! It was great. Be sure you read the book too!

Love it

Rented this movie for a class I am taking and I’m not reading the book. The movie was good!

Great movie

I finally got to see the new "The Great Gatsby" movie and was surprised at how good it was. I was expecting it to be awful given my opinion of director Baz Luhrmann's prior work, notably the insipid "Moulin Rouge!"Although there were considerable liberties and abridgements taken with the story, the core of it was definitely preserved and, more importantly, the contradictory but simultaneously elegaic and exuberant tone of the novel was preserved.Earlier adaptations, such as the 1974 version with Robert Redford, were so plodding as to be almost unwatchable. The 1974 movie makes the fatal mistake of being too realistic, reducing the whole affair to something like a Lifeiime television movie. That's exactly what you get from the novel if you distill the bare plot and characters but lose the tone, because the novel is ultimately structured as a nostalgic remembrance of lost hope. The deliberately unrealistic excitement of a period in time when anything seemed possible is the perfect environment for Baz Luhrmann.In the new version, the cinematography and costumes mesh well to convey the excitement of the Jazz Age at its peak.The music was surprisingly appropriate, the exact opposite of "Moulin Rouge," with George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" -- one of my all-time favorite pieces -- as a significant recurring motif. Even the new music, especially "Young and Beautiful," fits in well.The movie is visually very impressive in a way that the novel cannot be, but it does conjure an imaginary and unrealistic world of grandiose excess that is worth seeing. The 3D gimmick is kind of pointless, but that is true for most movies.Without spoiling anything, the opening credits begin in rough black and white with uneven lighting and flicker, very much like watching an old movie actually made in the 1920s, before the credits change to sharp and colorful gilded art deco designs. The effect is clever, making all of the flashy color that is the movie seem almost dreamlike, copying the elegaic tone of the novel. Eventually the closing credits reverse the effect back to fuzzy black and white.Gatsby is an archetypal character whose purity and single-mindedness are his defining elements, creating a kind of naivety that distinguishes him from everyone around him -- and which eventually destroys him at the hands of those more cynical. One of the main reasons why the novel has become what it is today is that it presciently in 1925 understood that the Roaring 20s were an unsustainable party that must come to an end, which we know now from hindsight would happen with a horrific crash and decade-long hangover of the Great Depression. F. Scott Fitzgerald's almost puritanical discomfort with the Jazz Age, despite being its most enthusiastic contemporaneous chronicler, proved to strike just the right chord. A very good book about the 1920s Paris expatriate community (of which Scott and Zelda were prominent members) borrows a quote from a less well known writer as its title: "Everybody Was So Young."The characters are all very dislikable, with the exception of Jay Gatsby himself. Nick Carraway is extremely self-critical, regarding himself as a failure. One of the most common criticisms of the novel is that Gatsby's interest in Daisy lacks credibility because she is something of a petulant child who needs to be taken care of, but of course she mirrors to some extent Scott's real-life wife Zelda and their co-dependent marriage. Regardless of the truth about Zelda, who was by all accounts a remarkably capable and intelligent woman, there can be no doubt that she was treated as someone who needed to be taken care of and eventually ended up confined to a mental hospital. I don't want to fall into the trap of misidentifying authors with their characters, but it seems clear that Scott intended Gatsby's interest is Daisy to be entirely credible, even if Gatsby's perception of her was idealized as a result of his naivety and boundless optimism.The original novel is unstinting in its portrayal of the mistreatment of servants, which is intended to be offensive. What Scott Fitzgerald fully intended to condemn in 1925 looks even worse to us now, but it is an important part of the story and is an essential literary device used repeatedly to illuminate the defects of Tom Buchanan's character and worldview. The novel draws explicit parallels between Gatsby, as what would then be disparaged as a "self-made man," and the servants --- both of whom Tom believes are limited and inexorably predestined by their circumstances of birth. Indeed, one of the reasons Tom is so disgusted at being described as "the polo player" is because being known for what he does instead of how he was born degrades him, in his own view, to the level of competition with Gatsby and the servants.I should explain somewhat my comment about "liberties and abridgements." There are a number of lines of narration and dialogue that, although quite widely known and remembered from the novel, are simply gone in the movie. The opening and closing text is preserved, as it had to be, but everything else was apparently up for challenge about inclusion.Almost all of the subplots are removed, which reduces some of the characters to very minor status, especially Jordan Baker who in the novel is an iconic representation of the independent "new woman" that we might today call a "feminist," and is therefore a counterpart to narrator Nick Carraway who, although of respectable pedigree and a Yale alumnus, has to actually work for a living. The screenwriters were probably correct in thinking that this was of much less interest to the modern audience than it was when the novel was published. On the other hand, it makes some things incomprehensible, such as why Tom Buchanan gets so annoyed at being introduced as "the polo player."The handling of the Meyer Wolfsheim character is outright bizarre, probably because there were fears of the portrayal being regarded as anti-Semitic despite the character unquestionably being based on the real-life Arnold Rothstein. For one thing, he is played by an actor whose ancestry is from India, a pretty extreme case of "funny, he doesn't look Jewish," and who is the only actor who seems to have any identifiable ethnicity with a speaking role that is not a black waiter. Odd things are changed, such as his cufflinks made from human teeth turning into a tie-pin, possibly because the screenwriters were worried that the modern audience would be too confused as to what cufflinks are, but the cufflinks are significant because they are something that would not be noticed immediately but when noticed would pierce the veneer of civility -- a major theme in the novel.It's a vibrant, colorful movie that successfully evokes, if not the real Jazz Age, then our collective historical memory of it.

This is my favorite Baz Luhrmann movie!! The music, the directing, the acting, the writing, the costumes, the set, the cinematography, everything about this movie is a masterpiece for the Luhrman. I missed this in 2013, if I had caught this during that year, it would’ve been my favorite of that year by far!!

First of all, I Love the 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. The novel is regarded as the best reflection of The Roaring 20s/The Jazz Age (think Flapper culture). I read it in college and then many times since. But this is about the movie. But if you are a fan if the book and have not seen the movie then you are probably wondering, "How do the two compare?"I am not going into the may comparisons and contrasts and if you have just read the book once, then you many not notice very many differences at all. Yes, there are some contradictions between the two, but not enough to be a deal killer. But on the other hand, YES, there are many close comparisons the movie makes to the novel, but keep in mind that this movie is mainly about the book's reflection of the times, and the themes, and symbolism that emerge between the society, setting and the well-defined characters.Well, back to the movie itself. It is visual candy. The hard stuff and the ones that melt in your mouth. I love the cast selection, the cinematography, the music (I love the songs Young and Beautiful and the remake of U2's Love is Blindness), the pacing, the suspense and the love story. It was a crooked time that was lived through too much idleness, want, need,corruption, and liquid confusion. Not to mention some having too much money with a bankrupt soul and others having too little money and the want to sell their souls. And this is perfectly reflected throughout the movie.I do not want to create any spoilers for those who have yet to see this picture, so I will just say that I do recommend it whole-heartedly. It is a masterpiece that needs to be studied.As for the 3D, it is a bonus. I Love it! It is amazing in my opinion. Please keep in mind, I do not know about what is good vs. bad 3D. I just know what I like when I see it. Some may want to chime in on this, but don't. I like it and you will not convince me that it is bad 3D. I play it on my curved Samsung TV and crank it up and travel back to the 1920's and watch a beautifully sad story of misguided people in troubled times.Additionally, this packaging came with a digital code, DVD disk, BluRay disk and a separate 3D Bluray disk all for $9.33 with 2 day Prime Shipping. Yes, $9.33! That was not a typo.