While writing an article on Jack Clayton’s 1974 film adaptation for The Great Gatsby for the University of Toronto Mississauga school newspaper, The Medium, I recalled what I remember seeing from the film and relating it back to the book. Furthermore, I remember watching the more recent film depiction of Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and how faithful, though cinematically different it was to the earlier film and text.
As something of a cinephile, I am harkened back to another film that took place during the era of Gatsby: Peter Jackson’s adaptation of King Kong. Set in New York, just as Gatsby is, we see how America – a proud nation that claims to be “on top of the world” – is sinking in poverty and crime. Things are a-changing, indeed, as this is the modernist movement; women have more agency and decision with their jobs and social life, as well as the freedom to express yourself in any way that one would like, even if it is not accepted by others.
What does The Great Gatsby have to do with King Kong? The aforementioned quotation of being “on top of the world” was not pulled out of thin air. Rather, in the opening scene of Jackson’s 2005 film, we see how America, New York specifically, is most certainly not “on top of the world,” juxtaposed with Al Jolson’s “I’m Sitting On Top of the World” playing in the background. New York City, as it seems in the film that has been sacked by the roaring twenties, has turned itself into “valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald, 23). The reasoning for the insertion of the full quotation is to show how short it takes for time to change, and how the visual interpretation of a piece of history is so real in comparison to the literary form in the novel. What once was a “valley of ashes” has turned itself into the city of New York. Indeed, the machine is still working, but it is hindered by the overflow of population and the necessity for economy. Perhaps the roar of the “roaring twenties” represents the roaring laughter of those living their lives in gluttony as well as the roaring cries and screams of those in need of the necessary elements of survival, such as food, water, shelter, and love.
In the first clip, we see the glitz, glamour, and utter chaos of the world that Baz Luhrmann has created in order to create The Great Gatsby. There is partying, drinking, (provocative) dancing, and no sense of life outside of it. We literally see and hear the roars in the trailer for the 2013 film in this trailer for the film adaptation of Fitzgerald’s text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpqMr4wTNs
Contrast the insanity of the 2013 film with the Peter Jackson film that came eight years prior to it. The only drinking that you see is that of desperation so that the pain of poverty will be alleviated. The only gluttony seen in the clip is that of every person you see waiting at food banks, not because they want to eat until they regurgitate, but because they have not eaten in days. Once you skip the 45 seconds of production companies and other miscellaneous film logos, you see how art imitates life, and how life imitates art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opV-Q2co6UQ
It seems that the people in the latter clip would like to do what Gatsby says is possible: to "repeat the past," and to live without worry.
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