The Great Gatsby

In this earliest cinematic translation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel, Nick Carraway serves as our wide-eyed guide through the gold-leafed decadence of 1920s Long Island. He becomes the accidental confidant to Jay Gatsby, a man who has manufactured a billionaire persona from the ether of the American Dream. The narrative focuses heavily on Gatsby’s desperate, almost predatory pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, his former flame now married to the brutish Tom Buchanan. As the parties grow louder and the liquor flows in defiance of prohibition, the film strips away the glitter to reveal a hollow core of obsession. It is a story of a man trying to buy back a past that has already been liquidated by time, leading to a collision of social classes that ends in inevitable, sun-drenched tragedy.