3.36 - THE GREAT GATSBY (2013) and Decadence

This week we conclude our Baz Luhrmann season with his most recent film, 2013’s THE GREAT GATSBY. We have disparate opinions on this — and differing levels of familiarity with the story — but then we move onto a discussion of the movie’s presentation of different ideas about wealth, concepts of class and race on-screen in various countries, and the extent to which the film works as a presentation of the very social dislocation that is its subject.

Next Week
Next week we begin our Ben Wheatley season with his 2009 film DOWN TERRACE — find it here: https://www.amazon.co. uk/Down-Terrace-Julia-Deakin/ dp/B00FYO0A0W.

This Week’s Media
R.I.P.D. (2013): Robert Schwentke, Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds
DEADPOOL 2 (2018): David Leitch, Ryan Reynolds, Josh Broli

Recommendations
GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002): Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis
VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (2017): Luc Besson, Dane DeHaan, Cara Delivigne
THE DEPARTED (2006): Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon
THE ICE STORM (1997): Ang Lee, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen

Footnotes
For more on the original 1925 novel, see here: https://en.m.wikipedia. org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby. As a reminder of the Brechtian separation we were talking about with ROMEO + JULIET the other week, there’s this: https://en.m.wikipedia. org/wiki/Separation_of_the_ elements. Here are articles on ideas of dramatic archetypes and dramatic dislocation: http:// dramaticapedia.com/2012/08/17/ the-8-archetypal-characters-2 and http://tvtropes.org/ pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ DramaticDislocation. This book is good on twentieth-century history, including The Great Depression and The American Dream: https://books.google. co.uk/books/about/America_in_ the_Twentieth_Century.html?id= sJ2KPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y. And this is good on outsiders in US history: https://books.google. co.uk/books/about/Deportation_ Nation.html?id=irgpGACppy0C& redir_esc=y. Finally, Sam mentions THE BIRTH OF A NATION; if you really want to depress yourself, check out the 1915 original (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/ wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation) or the 2016 remake (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/ wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation_( 2016_film)).