The Great Gatsby (Book and Movie review by Bob Racine)

                             The book by F. Scott Fitzgerald

                                         The movie

                             (2 hrs & 23 min, color, 2013)

What does it profit a man if he gains his millions by however the means, fair or foul, but loses his heart as well as his soul to romantic illusion and high minded expectation?  How can even hope become superficial and dangerously risky?  A major writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald sheds fervent light upon these questions.

Few novels of the twentieth century have corralled the kind of interest and fascination and earnest study among the literati as his 1925 portrait of life among lavish moneyed society in post-World War I America.  At least six movie adaptations of “The Great Gatsby” have emerged over the past nine decades and the best seller has never during all that time been out of print.  It has found its way into college curricula and is generally recognized as Fitzgerald’s signature creation. 

What makes it so?  The novel is anything but a sweeping epic.  It is not a panorama or a multifaceted account of history or a magnum opus.  All the action occurs during one summer.   In fact, the text is compact, terse and concise, a relatively short read.  Some may think of it as an extended short story.  There are actually only four major characters, and one of those narrates the entire flow of events and provides the sole sustained viewpoint.  The other three are objectified, seen only through his eyes.  The story does not carry us into a wide assortment of settings; the action is confined mostly to a remote point on the shores of Long Island Sound.  The bulk and complexity that attract most readers to works of fiction are not present.  There is nothing racy, controversial, exotic, or horrific about it, and the only incident of violence comes near the very end.  So how do we explain its phenomenal commercial success?          

The plot is rather simple too.  The time is the early 1920s.  A young war veteran from the Midwest named Nick Carroway pursuing a career as a bond salesman in nearby Manhattan decides to settle in a modest middle class house by himself on Long Island Sound to be near his rich second cousin Daisy, who is married to a corrupt and philandering scion of wealth Tom Buchanan.  Nick is curious about their lifestyle and a bit tempted to try it out.  In his exploration he is soon distracted and further enticed by an even wealthier next door neighbor, a man who calls himself Jay Gatsby.  Gatsby is noted for his elaborate and sumptuous parties to which all New Yorkers can invite themselves on weekends, while he himself is a private individual seldom seen by anyone, hidden away behind his own walls.  His palatial mansion is directly across the Sound from the Buchanans, unbeknownst to them.  Nick discovers that Gatsby, veteran of the war himself and a man from a very poor background, is an old lover of Daisy’s who by shady means has made himself a multimillionaire.  Nick through Gatsby’s chicanery becomes the reluctant catalyst to reunite his cousin Daisy with her ex-boyfriend.  It seems that Gatsby is still carrying a torch for Daisy and is determined to win her back from the husband he does not think she really loves.  Little does Nick know that his accommodation to Gatsby’s wishes will have tragic results.      

This summary would not give anyone who has not read the book any idea why it continues to be regarded as a literary masterpiece.  The answer lies in the writing itself.  Fitzgerald’s prose is beautiful and mesmerizing.  In fact, much of it is more poetic than prosaic, and that is why translating it into narrative linear terms has dogged the efforts of many to frame it on the silver screen.  This is the fourth attempt I have seen, and in my opinion it is the best rendering thus far.  Not that it is without its flaws.  Baz Luhrman directed it and co-wrote it with Craig Pearce; he loves glitz, flash, stardust and even a little fireworks and has used them to some excess, especially in the party scenes.  But despite his over indulgences the poetic phraseology comes through, uncompromised and unvarnished. 

Primarily what makes this a superior adaptation is the choice casting of Nick and Jay.  Toby McGuire gives Nick a pulse beat that I have never felt before.  He is more a restless presence than earlier adaptations have made him, not just a mouthpiece.  We seem to hear more from him than in previous films.  And Leonardo DiCaprio is quite captivating as Gatsby.  He gets something slightly edgy into the man that hints of a desolate child hiding beneath his veneer of self-imposed refinery and shrewdness.  (I have always had difficulty accepting Robert Redford in that title role in the 1974 vehicle.  There was something too callow and even keeled in the way he handled it.)

But despite all DiCaprio’s good work, Gatsby, as in the novel, remains somewhat of a mystery, as he is intended to be.  Even to Nick, who comes to know him better than anyone else, he seems to be a dreamer reaching in the twilight that he believes is morning for an objective that has already left him behind.  He is a singular embodiment of romantic illusion, which Nick in his reflections calls a “romantic readiness,” all dressed up in an immaculate conceit.  The mystery consists of the form his secret pacts with the forces of darkness have previously taken and how in such a short time he, a child of poverty, “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”  His pursuit of Daisy becomes more pathetic as it unravels and carries him to a fatal face-to-face with his very soul.   

Daisy too, beautifully portrayed by Carey Mulligan, is something else underneath her refinery.  She is a fluttery, somewhat flighty young woman on the surface. She rhapsodizes in a dream of her own and has become inured to Tom’s (Joel Edgerton) infidelities, but you do not have to dig down far to get some idea of the repressed pain they have caused her.  In the novel someone comments that “her voice is the sound of money.”   She has always lived in the lap of luxury; she threw Gatsby over because he was poor.  But now that he is rich and she has the chance to have both her first love and her sumptuous lifestyle, she lands on the horns of a dilemma from which she is not morally or constitutionally equipped to extract herself.  Nick has to witness this sad little “holocaust,” as he calls it in the book, helpless to stop the heartbreak he sees coming.  In this movie it is enough to sour him altogether about life on the east coast and the emotional blow it delivers to him lands him in a mental institution where in retrospect he tells Gatsby’s story to a therapist.

Nick slowly comes to the realization that Tom and Daisy and all their plushy acquaintances are “a rotten crowd.”  His last words about them are brutal in their indictment:  They “smashed up things and people then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness.”  In contrast Gatsby, victimized by their sly machinations, wins his begrudging respect as the most “hopeful” man he has ever known.  But we know, if Nick does not, that hope divorced from realism is a fool’s errand to nowhere.  Hoping does not begin by returning to a place from which you once started; hope begins at the present moment.

  

All those of us who make a habit of exploring the vicissitudes of the human heart with an understanding mind would do well to either see the movie or read the book that has enthralled millions over the past century.  You can pick up a copy of it from just about any public library.   And of course the movie is available from the renowned Netflix.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

Fosse (Review of Stage Musical by Bob Racine)

                             2 hrs and 10 minutes in color

                                 Available from Netflix

Choreography!  In all likelihood everyone reading this has heard the word and chances are most of you can define it.  The art of Choreography is ages old, but I did not realize until very recently that the word did not take up residence in the English language dictionary until the 1950s.  And it was not put to unofficial public use in our country until 1936, when the immortal George Balanchine was credited with it in the opening stage production of the musical “On Your Toes.”  “Choreography by” Balanchine!  Before that the programs of stage productions read something like “Dances by” or “Dance Supervision by” or “Dance Designer.”  Of course any student of Greek is familiar with the two Greek words chorea (dance) and graphe (writing) from which the term is derived.  So Choreography is the practice of writing with dance, dance-writing, using configurations of dancers and dance steps to say something. 

For centuries the designation was confined for the most part to the classy, graphic art of formal nineteenth century Ballet.  Think “The Nutcracker!”  But by the 20^th century modern influences came into the picture.  Think Jerome Robbins, Alvin Ailey, Gene Kelly! 

And think BOB FOSSE!     

What I offer for your consideration this time is “Fosse,” a posthumous two-hour-plus compilation of over twenty choreograph sequences from his most successful musicals, first staged in New York in 1999, twelve years after Fosse’s death – a stage musical production complete within itself!  Contrary to possible misunderstanding it is not a documentary study; it is all dancing, one number segueing into another without a break (except for intermission time).  Included is some of the work he did in the following: “Sweet Charity,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” “Damn Yankees,” “The Pajama Game,” and “Pippin.”  He also created a show for the stage in 1978 with the modest title of “Dancin’ ” and designed a television special featuring the talents of Liza Minelli, called “Liza with a Z”.  Parts of these two are also included in this two-hour plus bonanza. 

His career spanned over thirty years.  He won numerous awards and nominations for awards, including the Oscars, the Emmys (one for “Liza with a Z”) and an unheard of eight nominations for a Tony.  He was Oscar nominated for movie director four times and won once – for the movie version of “Cabaret.”  Some of you may have seen the 1979 movie, “All That Jazz,” which he wrote and directed as a semi-autobiography, starring Roy Scheider.   Some of that film’s dance content also shows up in “Fosse.”

Bob had his performers doing things with the human body, both solo and in aggregate, for which there was no precedent.  Anything you can imagine a body could possibly do short of endangerment to life and limb he had his troop doing – and then some.  There are those, and I am one, who think he cannot be equaled, that no other dance master’s work has ever even approached his. 

Scores of words can be employed to describe the personality and temperament of his work:  lively, exuberant, jazzy, frisky, offbeat, fast-stepping, perky, acrobatic, furious, sassy, sometimes saucy, satirical, impish, often joyous, nonsensical, but almost always slyly funny.  The bodies that do the interpreting are lithe, loose, expressing themselves in all varieties of symmetrical and asymmetrical contortions.  Finger-snapping and leg-slapping play a huge part, as do hats.  He creates varied moods, but at the same time keeps his music and the dancing feet moving with an intense, driving force, aided by a most astounding use of lighting.  There is a huge stretch of imagination in every individual act; nothing is presented in one dainty dimension.  The basic maneuver or strategy is treated to multiple variations, often starting in simple steps but compounding into progressively more exciting and electrifying and sensational highs.  Watch “Fosse” and I suspect that your blood pressure would be given a great boost.   He transformed the art of Choreography, gave audiences worldwide a new way of looking at it.  He was also an actor, a dancer in his own right, director (stage and screen), screenwriter, and film editor.  What a career! 

Fosse the man died in 1987, twelve years before this posthumous tribute materialized.  One single stage performance of it was filmed, later shown on television and eventually published in DVD.  That is what you see on this disc.  The show, which in itself became a Tony winner in 2000, was put together by celebrated dancer Gwen Verdon, his third wife and partner, and by Ann Reinking, a member of his coterie almost from the beginning, who after Verdon’s untimely death became the show’s director.  Reinking knew Fosse’s work inside and out, all his techniques, all his disciplines, all his vision and intent, having been exposed to them first hand, and she made this sensational work to honor his memory and keep alive his name and his unique place in the pantheon of musical masters. 

The enjoyable advantage in watching the video is not having to sit through all the plays themselves, some of which are much better than others; a few of them I find rather inferior in terms of the storylines, which he had nothing to do with.  Of course it all depends upon individual taste.  But in all of them the Choreography is worth the price of admission.  Some great singers are heard along with the footwork, and the orchestration is first class at every turn.  Several different musical styles play a part – rock, ragtime, swing, blues, modern romantic, even boogie. The chief singer is Ben Vereen, a very colorful comedian and showman, a dancer himself who has been with Fosse ever since the first audition for hoofers took place under Fosse’s supervision in the 1950s.  He has style-plus and contributes quite a lot to the electric pacing. 

At curtain call I count twenty-nine members of the cast altogether.  What a costume nightmare somebody must have lived through and what a rigor beyond imagining to which the players had to submit changing their garb so many times, some of them with only a minute or so to make the switch.    

My favorite episode is a takeoff on the classic song, “Steam Heat.”  Two men and one woman do a crazy spin and tumble on romantic intimacy, stretching every nerve and fiber.  For me it is nothing short of a showstopper.  “I Wanna Be a Dancin’ Man” ranks high with me too, a masterpiece of coordination.  A duo from “Chicago” is fantastically good, an Emmy winner in and of itself.  Two shapely females sing of the tawdry values they enjoy in the so-called Roaring Twenties.  Have we not all heard of “Hey, Big Spender,” a highlight from “Sweet Charity?”  And nothing I know of in musical history can compare with the fifteen-minute-long finale, when everybody gets into the act, literally, accompanied by an onstage band.  What a jamboree that becomes!  It should carry you to the heights of watching and listening pleasure.  There is one act out of the bunch that I am not fond of, a very torrid bit of sashaying that comes close to being a sleazy striptease.  Some of you might want to fast forward through it.  The only solemnly serious piece is furnished by Vereen doing his touching and sad immortalization of “Bojangles” Robinson.

   

Do not form the misconception that Fosse is a clown or a leader of clowns.  There is no ambience of the circus here.  What you get is first class professionalism and artistry all the way.  Every segment is scrupulously crafted.  Actually the show is a three-act deal, and during the two intermissions we are taken backstage into the dressing room and treated to some personal sharing by Ann Reinking and Ben Vereen and two other women performers.  They give us some warm nostalgic conversation about the Fosse they knew and what made him the very best.  All give favorable report of how satisfying and supportive he was to work with.   

Vereen calls Fosse’s work a testimonial to life itself.  I always go away with the feeling that that is so.  In accord with that claim he sings, both at the show’s start and near its end, “Life is just a bowl of cherries, don’t take it serious, life’s too mysterious.  You work, you save, you worry so, but you can’t take the dough when you go... The sweet things in life to you were just loaned, so how  can you keep what you’ve never owned... So live and laugh, laugh and love... live and love and laugh at it all.”  I hope you who view it will feel, as you view, the aliveness and the love and the laughter.  I hope it does something for your soul.  You do not need a thinking cap for “Fosse”; a love of music, some tapping feet, an open heart and a sense of rhythm will be quite enough.

  

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.