Book Vs Movie: “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys.”

“All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.”

By Galya Dimitrova

The world of rich and famous – a glamorous mycrocosmos where reigns eternal joy, laughter and carelessness. “Always sunny in the rich man’s world.” Or at least so it seems for the outsiders. F. Scott Fitzgerald, however, tells us a different story. A story about the world of the rich who have nothing else but money. A tragis story about a man and his dream to become someone who would suit his beloved. A biography of hollowness, hysteria and extravagance. The story about The Great Gatsby. 

Before I start analysing the characters, I would like to say I like the movie as much as I like the book. I cannot possibly

The Great Gatsby: book cover

choose the one over the other. The book tells an amazing story – moving, cruel, eternal. The dazzling worl Fitgerald creates makes you so involved in the story that once you start the book, you can’t put it away till you have finished it. And even after that you can feel its magic lingering in the air, you can almost hear the music from the parties, the loud laughters, the clinging of champagne glasses. The images of the wealthy people and their colourful clothes and jewels will haunt you. The personal stories of each and every character will touch you. They are so well described that you have the feeling they are real, they are people who actually exist and you know personally.

The Great Gatsby: Film Poster

To see that overwhelming drama on the big screen is definitely thrilling. Under the affected ease establlished between the characters, a volcano of passions is about to erupt. Pain, love, greed – each of the heros has a trait typical for their personality and the actors portraying them should do it very elegantly, very carefully. And they all succeed in it! This is one of the productions with the best casting ever.

Jay Gatsby is a unique character. So different from all the rich heroes we have met in the literature so far. Despite the fact that he is rich and charming, he is disciplined and unspoiled, extremely patient and tactful, very calm. As if he is not a part of the society he is supposed to belong to. And here is the reason why  – he is devoted entirely to his first love, Daisy. The old story motif “from rags to riches” is intertwined with the one of the ever changing power of love. Everything Gatsby has ever done is for the sake of gaining the same social status as his beloved and thus be close to her again. The parties he is giving are given just with the hope of Daisy coming to them and him meeting her once more after they have once been parted. What can I say about Robert Redford’s interpretation of him. He has his imposing figure, his enchanting smile and his naive eyes. Gatsby is a man untouched by the corruption of the world he lives in. He has a clear goal and he strives for it constantly. In the same time there is something extremely resolute and proud in him. Redfords portrayes him immaculately through the gestures he uses, by the way he speaks, by the way he is interacting with the rest of the characters. And most of all, by his facial expressions. Among the most memorable one is when he meets Daisy in the house of his neighbour Nick Carraway:

So what is the difference between Gatsby and the other characters in the story? Gatsby comes from a poor background.

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

He has always wanted to become rich and belong to the upper class but it didn’t come easily to him. He worked years, though not always legally, to achieve it. And he knows the cost of wealth. The struggle made hm even more diciplined and determined. And when he falls in love which he decided never to give up, that shapes his strong character completetely. Poor James Gatz strived to become the wealthy Jay Gatsby and enjoy his money with his beloved Daisy.  In other words, he invests in his happiness, to him money is a precondition for a happy life in the future. He has a goal and he works to achieve it – personally I have always been fascinated by the list of tasks his father finds in on of his books after Gatsby’s death.

This is not what the other characters do. In fact they do right the opposite – they earn and spend money for indulging their needs only. Not one of them spends or invests for the sake of making someone else happy. They are all consumers. Gatsby is a dreamer in the world of cold-hearted consumers.

“I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

Surprisingly enough, Daisy is one of them. She loves him at first but then gives in at the sight of wealthy Tom Buchanan. Later when Gatsby asks her to tell Tom she never actually loved him, she gets confused and hints that she might have loved him in the beginning. By nature she is indecisive, absent-minded, careless and at times hysterical. And she cannot possibly take any responsibility about anything. The waelth and luxurity she lives in inly intensify all these traits of her character. Other are making decisions instead of her, others are responsible instead of her, others do everything instead of her.Her husband totally conducts her life and yet she tries to resis him at times, in the end she gives up because this is the way she is used to, the easy way, and goes back enjoying privileges of being rich. She can never maintan such an elevated feeling as love because she is too much into the materiality, the money and the objects. No wonder what fascinates her most is Gatsby’s house, wealth and success rather than Gatsby himself. She is ready to be his now, when he has the material benefits she needs so much.

Mia Farrow is epic in that role! She portrayes Daisy just the way she has to be – inattentive and romantic, with a careless blank expression and occasional flickers of sanity. Most of the time it is as if she lives in her own world. The thing Farrow could be given greatest credit for is the frantic laughter that suits her heroine so well.

“She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.”

Gatsby’s archenemy Tom Bucanan is his complete antipode. He represents everything Gatsby isn’t – he has always been rich but has no manners and no feelings. He is the ultimate consumer and cares only about himslef. He is also racist (he recommends Nick a book that propagants against mixed marriages and the mixture of nations) and looks down on everybody around him (George Wilson, for instance). He is shameless enough to have a mistress, which everybody knows about. Even his wife. He is arrogant and does not seem very bothered after his mistress is killed by Daisy. As he does not have conscience. He detests Gatsby because he sees his wife may develop deep affection about him. That is why he destroys him and moves on. Bruce Dern portrays him very well. The most important about his act is the voice – cold, haughty and rude, exactly the one Tom Bucanan in the book would have.

Myrtle Wilson, George’s wife and Tom’s mistress, also falls in the cathegpry of consumers, the users that care only about their own good and who are blinded by the fake happiness money offeres them. Her obsession brings her to her painful death. In the movie she is brilliantly portrayed by Karen Black. Her most memorable part is her monolog at a party she and Tom give – passionate, deep and moving:

                                               http://youtu.be/mACB1vdP5k0

“It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.”

Jordan Baker is one of the coldest, most melancholic characters in the book. She is a famous golfer with scandalous  reputation and as it turns out later, Gatsby has his role in covering up her fraud. She likes gossips and rumours and sometimes she is the one who spreads them (it is namely her who tells Nick about Tom’s lover). She is free-spirited and indifferent to other people’s problems by nature but intrigues amuse her, that is why she is interested in the relationship between Gatsby and her friend Daisy. Lois Chiles portrayes her suitable with elegant sluggish gestures, quiet melancholic   motionless voice and bored look on her face all the time.

The two characters who are entirely different from the consumers and are close to Gatsby in a way are Nick Carroway and George Wilson.

“So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”

Nick represents the ordinary hard-working man. Compared to the wealthy people who surround him in West Egg, he is rather poor. He makes friends with Gatsby and sympathizes him. He realizes Gatsby is different from the other wealthy people. He is his only true friend and also the only one who attends his funeral. The whole story of Gatsby is told from Nick’s point of view, consequently Fitgerald’s point of view. He based it on personal observations as he aslo used to attend parties and be part of the dazzling world of rich men. He is speaking through his character and his opinion about everything that happenes in the story can be read between the lines.

To me, George Wilson is the most dramatic character of all. He has been working all his life and given his wife all the love and care he is capable of and yet he gets nothing in return. He lives in a miserable place, Myrtle is cheating on him and he is always humiliated by Tom because of his poverty. His end is also tragic – heart-broken by Myrtle’s death and mislead by Bucanan, he shoots Gatsby and then killes himself. I must admit I like this character more in the movie than in the book. He is geniuosly depicted by Scott Wilson. All his play is remarkable but most fascinating are the parts when he portray’s George’s madness, depression and desperation. He portrayes him in such an intense way that makes you feel for him, makes you feel his pain. Such a brilliant act really makes you believe this person has lost everything, including his mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_AS5WFUO4w

There are a lot of great contribution to the story of Gatsby that the movie alone made. The details for example. The little details we may not notice at first but which are essential. My favourite one is the drunk woman at the first Gatsby’s party Nick goes to. She is like a caricature of a woman, an outcome of the dissipated poinless life some rich people lead – her

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him”

expensive clothes and hairstyle are ruined, aslo is her male-up and she can barely speak and stay awake due to the large ampunt of alcohol she has drunk. She is talks and tries to have a conversation with the other guests butthey don’t seem to notice her at all. They see her, they realise the condition she is in but they don’t seem to be impressed or care much. They treat her as a creature, as a thing, as a part of the enviroment but not as a person. She represents the downfall of young spoiled women Fitzgerald had the opportunity to observe while going to such parties himself.

“They’re a rotten crowd’, I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.

Another thing I praise much about the movie is the music – it gives it life. This is the sound of the epoch.No wonder it won an Academy Award for Best Music.

And of course, no one must fail to mention the brilliant acting of all the actors involved.

The Great Gatsby , both the book and the film adaptation from 1974, is a feast for the senses. There are so many coulours, images, sounds, odors and emotions – when you read the book and watch the movie you can experience them all. It is a novel you should read during the summer, enjoying the beautiful sunsets, the starry nights and the sweet scent of the flowers. It is guaranteed that you will be carried back to the 1920 when the story took place and will remain there till the last page of the book. And long after you finish it, you will still feel the perfumes in the air, you will still hear the music and the laughter coming from Gatsby’s mansion and you will still see Gatsby and Daisy dansing under the stars in the warm night.

“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”