When one asks you to recall a time in your life every once in a while your mind wanders not to a tale of yourself but rather others around you. Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) does this as he remembers the summer he came to be acquainted with his rich billionaire — I can’t remember the dollar value — neighbour, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).

In the 1920s with the economy booming Carraway moves to New York to try his artist’s hands at bonds. More important than this business venture of his he’s enthralled into the life and path of the enigmatic mystery, Jay Gatsby. This figure that many hear only tales of and happen to frequent his home for these large lavish parties but never seem to meet him. However, when we actually do, with a wonderously understated nature and friendly “Old Sport” to go along with the image we’re set at ease quickly. The film sets the stage for an interesting thought that many may not have expected.

I’m being vague. My adoration for this film comes from my meager surface understanding of the drama that is to be enjoyed when we throw in all these characters into one big melting pot of high class New Yorkers.

In the first chapter of the film we deal with the learning of Jay Gatsby. Carraway finally meets him after finally attending — due to personal invitation — one of his grand parties and following this we create an acquaintance that never feels perfectly balanced. There’s almost this sense of a looming ‘other’ element of the conversation yet to be discussed which keeps us intrigued and constantly awaiting for the next sentence to escape Gatsby’s lips hoping that instead of more rapturing grandness of this Gatsby character it will be a grounding element that will help us understand exactly where this is all going. When that understanding hits us though — as it does repeatedly in different forms — it sparks a curiouslty in us (the audience) that seems even more than when we were waiting for the answers that we’re now discovering.

The film’s visual study of class separations is also something that I can’t help but behold. Seeing the separation between George (Jason Clarke) and Tom (Joel Edgerton), Carraway and Gatsby, and eventually Gatsby and Tom create a sense of iconography that this film will be remembered for. This is mainly due to the fact that all these moments are created completely visually. The way that Luhrmann frames George when Tom comes to visit him in the “Valley of Ashes” — a place that seems to exist just for the working ‘constructing’ class — is one that never equates them. When we see Gatsby looking down upon Carraway (a not so lower class individual) from his window; or when Gatsby and Tom finally meet knowingly of both parties we’re finally given an even shot that changes as the film reveals its own mysteries.

Luhrmann, obviously a visual storyteller at the least, is able to take his style and while he continues to blow everything out of proportion at the same time it manages to matter when things are so unbelievably crazed on screen. While I was unable to see this movie in 3D I can only imagine how much more energetic the colours appear under that light. It would be like Luhrmann is repeating Gatsby’s line to us “My life, my life has to be like this. It has to keep going up.”. The film marks Luhrmann’s stock going up even higher than it did when Moulin Rouge hit big and I’m here hoping that it keeps going up because we need more visually crazed filmmakers atop the lists of studios willing to take risks with.

What do you think The Great Gatsby?