But I didn't hate it. In fact, it smacked me in the face that the Great Gatsby as a work of fiction that High-schoolers have to struggle through unenthusiastically and critics label as a seminal work describing the American condition or mentality, is really about a fantasy a person can create. And it never felt as poignantly real or imagined as in Luhrmans' Great Gatsby.
That fantasy, not of wealth of fame, (those do apply but not as strongly) but of impressing an ex-lover.
Perfect.
It is every person who has ever been dumped or rejected in some way's simple fantasy of creating a lifestyle of wealth and glamour so irresistible that when the EX sees them in their splendour, they cannot help but weep for the big mistake they made in dumping them, crawling back on their hands and knees to be taken back by this new, shiny version of who we think we should be.
Very few people do actually end up in the slinky red dress with the perfect hair and the Italian hunk on the arm at the exact moment the EX rolls his shopping cart down the isle you are in buying frozen yogurt and giggling in. More often than not, we are left to facebook stalking via friends who are not blocked and any potential rumours/gossip anyone may want to throw our way out of pity or from being worn down by our non-chalant inquiries.
It is a sad state of mind that taps into our obsessive and addictive currents of being human. Sigh. And poor Gatsby worked so tirelessly in making that obsession a reality that it turns the stomach when it all crumbles to pieces and Daisy chooses to remain with her jerky husband. You kind of want to shake him and convince him to just let it go JUST LET IT GO MAN!!!, but alas, some characters are just doomed to their fates.
And this is a very prevalent problem with a lot of friends I have. I can think of PLENTY of nights of wine guzzling and boy bashing where the past mistakes are discussed at length and future plots are discussed such as showing up to a mutual event, or sending a text or a wall post write that will be seen that sounds coy and cool and then be there looking coy and cool. Man. Take a lesson from Gatsby.
And that is the lesson isn't it? Gatsby, like many of my friends (and me at intervals in my life) can't seem to get over the fact that Daisy chose someone else and if they or he had only been more, done more, had more it would have all turned out differently. And that's the ripper. You see Daisy is only and imagined reality of a person in the book and in the film. She is only experienced from Gatsby's memory and mind and has very little personality. And that is what we do when we remember our EXES. We remember their niceties, their beauty and the way we felt good about ourselves when we were with them. And that has always been the blow-up sex doll solution to the whole thing. It is absolutely one-sided. And it is our side.
In real life our EXES just happened to meet someone else that interested them, or they needed to get on with something in their lives or they are players..whatever the case, the way we take it so personally is what makes us all Gatsby's at heart. And unless you let it (It and by it I mean that fantasy EX) go, you may end up being shot in your big empty fantasy house with no friends or family to mourn you ever existed.
Unless the narrator is Spiderman.
There is always that.
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