New-ish at the Movies: The Great Gatsby, Bekas, Fast & Furious 6 and The Last Sentence

For all the dig­i­tal glit­ter and anachro­nis­tic hip-hop­pery that sig­ni­fies our lat­est re-entry into Luhrman-land, The Great Gats­by itself takes fun­da­men­tal inspi­ra­tion from a black and white clas­sic from 1941. Fea­tur­ing a flash­back fram­ing device, a lone­ly and heart­sick tycoon star­ing out of the win­dow of a grotesque cas­tle, and even a breath­less deathbed “Daisy” uttered as if it summed up an entire life (like “Rose­bud”), Gats­by is no less than Baz Luhrman’s Cit­i­zen Kane. Even his star, Leonar­do DiCaprio is start­ing to resem­ble a Welle­sian hero, at least in the jow­els if not the girth.

So, no pres­sure, then, Baz – you’re only merg­ing the great Amer­i­can nov­el and the great­est movie of all time. Of course, he can’t pos­si­bly suc­ceed on his own unimag­in­ably ambi­tious terms, but he falls a bit short on the basic “tell a sto­ry” lev­el too – even if he man­ages to make some sequences sing.

Set in 1922 (and writ­ten by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in 1925, well before the Jazz Age came crash­ing down into the Great Depres­sion), Gats­by is the sto­ry of one man’s rein­ven­tion out of the trau­ma of World War One and into the longest, biggest (and most ille­gal) par­ty the world had ever seen.

[pul­lquote]Fast & Furi­ous is vast and curious[/pullquote]DiCaprio’s Gats­by has built a busi­ness empire out of the drug stores and speakeasies of Man­hat­tan and a Xanadu on the shores of Long Island, all the while gaz­ing long­ing­ly across the water at the house where Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mul­li­gan) lives. Daisy is the last piece of his puz­zle, she will make him whole and she will help him gain accep­tance into the high soci­ety that scorns his dubi­ous­ly-earned new mon­ey. He may also gen­uine­ly be in love with her, of course.

Nar­rat­ed from an alco­holic asy­lum by once-promis­ing writer and Gats­by-con­fi­dante Nick Car­raway (Tobey Maguire), the film thrusts us into the glam­orous milieu, attempt­ing to daz­zle the audi­ence as Car­raway is daz­zled by Gatsby’s charm. Noisy, impetu­ous, bois­ter­ous, the film suf­fers from Luhrman’s usu­al ADHD direc­tion. It’s as if he can’t bring him­self to just let the cam­era be — we’re always mov­ing and every­thing in front of the cam­era is always mov­ing. There’s no chance for the emo­tion­al con­tent to brew — Baz has to keep stir­ring.

Per­son­al­ly, I’m not too both­ered at the lib­er­ties tak­en with the orig­i­nal sto­ry (indeed, a lit­tle less reliance on nar­ra­tion and Fitzgerald’s prose might have helped the film find its own voice), after all a film has to find itself out of the source mate­r­i­al not become a set of audio-visu­al stu­dents notes. My beef with Gats­by is that I found myself not real­ly car­ing — and won­der­ing why Car­raway cared so much, so much that his own life col­lapsed into an alco­holic haze.

Bekas is a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale inspired by writer-direc­tor Karzan Kader’s escape from Saddam’s Iraq after the first Gulf War.

Kur­dish broth­ers Zana (Zamand Taha) and Dana (Sar­war Fazil) are orphaned and home­less, scrap­ing a liv­ing out of shoe shines and their wits. A sneak peak at a Super­man movie through a hole in the wall of the local fleapit inspires the boys to seek a new life in Amer­i­ca – except nei­ther of them knows where Amer­i­ca is or how to get there. Ten-year-old Dana tries to buy pas­sage across the bor­der from a shady peo­ple-smug­gler while younger Zana wins a don­key in a game of dice – which he imme­di­ate­ly names Michael Jack­son.

Live­ly and cute, the boys bick­er loud­ly and often as they make their treach­er­ous way across the desert, igno­rant of the very real dan­gers they face until it’s too late. Spec­tac­u­lar­ly shot in the Kur­dis­tan region of a still risky Iraq, your enjoy­ment of Bekas will depend on how endear­ing you find these kids. I adored them and real­ly enjoyed the film.

Fast & Furi­ous is vast and curi­ous – a fran­chise I even­tu­al­ly came to appre­ci­ate once I realised it is just as fan­tas­ti­cal as any lycra and cape super­hero movie, despite the blue col­lar set­ting. Five (Rio) was fun but Six takes them to Lon­don where the grey skies seem to suck a bit of the joie de vivre out of things. The crew – led by part-time movie stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walk­er – are in Blighty to take down a Welsh super-crim­i­nal (Luke Evans) with designs on a spe­cial piece of mil­i­tary kit known as “the com­po­nent”.

As usu­al, they take time out for an ille­gal street race (down White­hall and past Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus, as you do) but the most unfath­omable sec­tion is the final con­fronta­tion as they try and stop the villain’s escape from the word’s longest air­port run­way. Sil­ly fun, and most­ly set­ting up the next episode in the series.

The Last Sen­tence is an entire­ly respectable – if slight­ly morose – dra­ma about the one Swedish news­pa­per edi­tor who stood up to Hitler in the years before and dur­ing WWII. Jes­per Chris­tensen (the Quan­tum Organ­i­sa­tion vil­lain from Casi­no Royale who, inci­den­tal­ly, is still at large) plays Torgny Segerst­edt, a lapsed the­olo­gian with a some­what com­pli­cat­ed home life. The film implies that his implaca­ble oppo­si­tion to Nazism – he seems to know an awful lot about what they are going to do – is down to his roman­tic rela­tion­ship with the Jew­ish wife of his paper’s own­er.

That’s as maybe, but he rails unsuc­cess­ful­ly against Herr Hitler for more than 12 years, fail­ing to shake Sweden’s self-defen­sive neu­tral­i­ty. Hand­some black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and decent per­for­mances notwith­stand­ing, I’m not sure quite why we in 21st cen­tu­ry New Zealand are sup­posed to be inter­est­ed in this man. Two hours lat­er, I still don’t know.

[Cross-post­ed to Funer­als & Snakes]