Film Review by Maggie Hames
Books and movies are different in just about every way media CAN be different. But mainly, in books, unfixed images are created in the reader’s mind and are up to infinite interpretation. In a movie, ideas become fixed as particular actors, art direction choices, editing choices, or cinematographic choices. These images are open to endless analysis, but not endless interpretation. The best literary adaptations (for my money) translate a story to the screen; they don’t just transfer it. Just about the nicest compliment I can give to Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is that it is an interesting translation of a book to film, with innovative, even thought-provoking choices that convey more emotional depth than any screen version of this book has ever achieved. This is, simply put, the BEST screen Gatsby. And overall, it’s pretty great indeed.
