Snow White Queen

Writing (and finishing) a rough draft- this single challenge is probably what kills off the aspirations of most would-be writers. It is difficult, it is challenging, and even grueling. It’s also very time consuming and requires a lot of commitment. It’s no wonder so many people never get that first manuscript finished.

Of course, everyone wants to think that they’ll be different. Everyone likes to think that their story will be the Great (insert-your-country-here) Novel, and as such must be shared with the masses. It all sounds wonderful, but that means you actually have to finish a first draft. Cue the ominous choir accompanied with a creepy organ and an even creepier organist.

It’s not impossible, but, like I mentioned earlier, it is hard. So the first thing you want to do before embarking on a journey like this is to decide whether it’s worth putting in all this effort in the first place. If you don’t think your story is something special, something that deserves to be read and enjoyed, then you probably won’t ever need any of the information in this article, because you won’t be writing a rough draft. It’s is a long-term project. You need to stick with it, and if you don’t like your idea, then there’s no point in putting in all the work.

However, if you do want to go forward, good for you! Now that you’ve decided to proceed with your idea and write a rough draft, there is one rule that you should probably remember, if you know nothing else:

RULE #1 (The Golden Rule, the mother of all rules, the one rule you cannot afford to ignore): Your first draft is going to suck. It is going to be a suck-worthy suckfest full of suck. Accept it and move on.

Now that I’ve made that clear, I’ll just add that your story is not going to be wince-inducing forever. It’s the first draft, and for reasons I’ll elaborate on later, it’s better for your sanity to just let things be for the moment. (When you finally finish, you can go back to your manuscript to begin editing and really get to know your desk because your writing’s so horrible. For now, though, let’s respect the sanity, ok?)
As most everyone knows, there is no universal trick to guarantee success in your first-draft-writing endeavors. One thing I can do is to offer you a few more tips about writing rough drafts, to prevent you from pulling all of your hair out. (Although some premature balding does seem to be an occupational hazard here.)

TIP #1: Keep in mind where you’re going. If it helps you, write an outline of your plot, event by event, so you know what’s next and to keep you on track. (Especially if you’re one of those people who has the tendency to go off on a tangent.) Refer to your outline when you feel that you’ve reached a stagnation point and the plot’s not going anywhere.

TIP #2: Squash your inner critic. We’ve already established that your first draft is going to suck. You don’t need your inner critic telling you so incessantly as you type, because that’s just counterproductive and you’ll never get anything done. (However, don’t kill your inner critic, because you’ll have to come crawling back to it when it’s time to edit.)

TIP #3: If you’re a writer who has difficulty actually getting something on the page, find someone who shares an interest in writing as well. Exchange ideas and help each other. Another great idea is to try National Novel Writing Month, in which you attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. Even if you don’t reach quota, usually you end up with more text than you did when you started.

TIP #4: Spew word-vomit. Not a very polite thing to do in company, of course, but when it’s just you and your computer and you’re staring at a blank page, it’s ok to let loose a cascade of craptastic writing. You can fix it later and take it out if you need. Who knows, you might even hit on an idea you like by accident!

TIP #5: Take a break if you have to. Sometimes, we get a little sick of our own ideas and the thoughts we’ve been mulling over again and again. Step back and take a breath, especially if you’ve been coming to resent your story because of all the work it takes to get the words down. Think about something else for a week or two, and return rejuvenated, ready to write, and, if you’re lucky, with some new ideas.

TIP #6: Don’t give up. Cheesefest, I know, but some cheesy morals hold true, even if you have the urge to eat crackers along with them. Persistence is probably one of the qualities that marks the few who get published apart from the many who write. Even if you don’t top the New York Times’ Bestseller list, if you truly love what you’re writing, it will pay off, some way or other.

And on that note, be patient. Writing a novel takes time, and editing it will take even longer. But if you stick with it, eventually you’ll end up with something to be very proud of, regardless of its literary value. Finishing a novel is no small thing, even if it’s the rough shell of one. And when you finally reach the end of that story, when you have several trees’ worth of paper sitting in front of you, filled with horrible first draft writing, the sense of accomplishment must be immense.

So good luck and good writing!

Comment [18]

This site has a lot of informative articles about the difference between plot-driven and character-driven writing. (I would recommend checking out Kyllorac’s The Different Types of Story for a general overview.) The purpose of this particular article is to go into more detail about issue-driven and character-driven writing- what they are, the differences between them, examples, and common pitfalls that might trip up an amateur writer.

On an online discussion board for my AP English Literature course, I made the observation that our summer reading books (Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, The Stranger by Albert Camus, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) were not necessarily written to be stories enjoyed by the reader. I called these books ‘literature of ideas’, written to communicate the personal beliefs of the authors, with the stories and characters only a method of transportation.

To which my teacher replied, ‘Aren’t all fictional characters, created by authors, vehicles for the author’s ideas?’

That’s true, but kind of an oversimplified way to view it. The relationship between characters and their position as authorial mouthpieces is more a spectrum than an ‘either-or’ situation. 

Although to start off, I don’t really like the term ‘literature of ideas’. It’s very vague. All authors deal in ideas in one way or another. A better word would be ‘issue’, as in a philosophical problem or prediction that the author wishes to express his opinion about through fiction. This is still slightly different from ‘ideas’, which as far as writing goes, could deal with storytelling or characters in general. Issues, at least in my mind, go along more philosophical or thematic lines. With that defined and hopefully clarified, we can now return to the spectrum between ‘issue-driven’ and ‘character-driven’.

Issue-driven Writing

At one end, you have the issue-driven authors, such as Hesse, Camus, and Huxley, where you could argue that each character represents a facet of that issue that the author wants to write about, and not much beyond that. They exist solely to prove a point. The characters serve the point that the author wants to convey. For the issue-driven writer, the philosophy trumps the story of the characters.

Not that this isn’t a powerful method to write when it’s done right, but you’re not dealing with fictional people quite completely. And also, we’ve all encountered those stories in which you immediately know that this book is Against Racism or Against Homophobia or, very commonly, Against Sexism. (You know the one- where the Rebellious Princess throws a tantrum over the fact that she has to have an arranged marriage and, god forbid, wear dresses! Because that’s the absolute worst thing about sexism. Wearing a frilly dress.)

This happens a lot more often in fantasy than science fiction, at least as far as my experience goes. The point is that when you want to have a philosophy or your most passionately held beliefs reflected in your novel, please be careful that they don’t form a black hole of preaching that swallows up your story, characters and any reader’s interest. Also, if you’re writing an issue-driven novel, readers would appreciate it if you took some complexity into account. (More on that later.)

As in anything else, it takes skill and savvy to pull off a true issue-driven novel. When done right, it can be wonderfully incisive and focused, opening people’s minds and opinions. When it isn’t… the reader will know.

Character-driven Writing

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the character-driven authors. These attempt to create people, in all their complexities, and the plot is driven by these people without any external focus on what kind of philosophical point of view the author’s trying to get across. That’s not to say that there aren’t ideas or philosophical points in the books, or that the characters don’t carry them out. Rather, the characters drive the philosophy, not the other way around (as it tends to be with the issue-driven authors). The character-driven book can a lot more realistic, ambiguous and complex when done well, but often isn’t as clear or focused as the issue-driven book. 

I would take George R. R. Martin as a good example of the character-driven author. (To those who haven’t heard of him, his novels are the basis for the ‘Game of Thrones’ TV series on HBO. They are completely dependent on compelling character development, and anyone who’s interested in writing character-driven fantasy would do well to read his work.) 

Character-driven writing is what a lot of authors would like to strive for, but often it falls flat. As I mentioned earlier, issue-driven writing takes skill to pull off. The same principle applies on the other side as well. (In fact, almost everything about writing well could be boiled down to IT’S GOING TO BE HARD, DEAL WITH IT.)

While the budding issue-driven author often trips up by blaring their message far too loudly and indiscriminately, the character-driven author’s downfall tends to be the opposite- he (or she) doesn’t go far enough in thinking through their characters. The shallowness and inconsistency that result cause the house of cards to completely collapse.

Although on second thoughts, pitfalls in both writing methods (and most writing in general) boil down to one thing: not thinking. Clichés are the result of years and years of authors being lazy and taking the least complicated way out. Almost by definition they are not true representations of anything.

Readers are smarter than some authors may give them credit for. They know when you’ve delivered them recycled, re-vomited ideas from every pulp fantasy novel they’ve ever read. (Rebellious Princess, I’m looking at you.) They know that people, ideas, and issues are complicated. Sometimes, taking the time and effort to portray that in your writing goes a long way, no matter what your method or your ultimate point is. And in the process, you end up with a much more interesting result.

Conclusion

I could put it a lot more concisely in this way: issue-driven authors write their novels to illustrate a philosophical point to their audience by using fictional characters. Character-driven authors focus on the stories of people, but in the process of living the story, the audience has managed to pick up an underlying point or two that’s buried underneath the events of the characters’ lives.

Neither method is better or worse, objectively, as long as they’re done well (although the subjectivity of that is a whole other matter). They’re two ways to write, and great things have come of both. If you know what you’re trying to write and are completely adamant that that’s what you want to do, my only advice would be to seek out the masters who have already written in a similar style, learn everything you can from them, and then attempt to apply that to your own writing.

However, issue-driven and character-driven writing are not pure and sacred ideals. The spectrum, such as I’ve defined it, is actually very blurry. Why limit yourself? If good books can be written that are issue-focused, character-focused, or even plot-focused (and they have been), wouldn’t it stand to reason that an amazing book would have everything?

Comment [16]

This review, like the story it follows, is going to be in multiple parts. I simply have too much to say on the matter. And now, onward!

On Thursday night (technically Friday morning) I went to the IMAX 3D HFR midnight premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. There have been reviews swirling around all over the place, a lot of them mixed. I didn’t read many of them before I saw the movie (though I was aware of the general consensus), but now I have to say that I definitely see the merit of their criticisms.

DISCLAIMER

Before I go further, I’m going to lay out my biases as a reviewer up front. First of all, I’m a Tolkien fan. I’ve read (and loved) The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, and am slightly over-obsessed. This is fairly standard, but it does say a lot about what kinds of things I’m lenient with. Secondly, I also love Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings. (For convenience, when I discuss the filmmakers, I’ll simply refer to Jackson, unless I’m obviously talking about someone else.)

I don’t delude myself into thinking that they’re flawless, but I’m willing to accept the liberties that Jackson took with the text if they made pragmatic sense for an adaptation. My own personal view on this score is that Jackson is interpreting Tolkien, and a lot of what Tolkien wrote doesn’t look good on-screen. As an adapter, it’s Jackson’s duty and responsibility to make the story fit his medium. I think he accomplished this admirably with LotR for the most part.
With that said, the question is inevitable- does Hobbit measure up?

THE OVERALL, NON-SPOILERY CONCLUSION- READ THIS IF NOTHING ELSE

I don’t think it does. The cast is great, and I actually did like some of the changes that Jackson made, or at least saw the necessity of them. On the other hand, I have to wonder how much the filmmakers actually understood the fundamental nature and tone of the book. I’m going to attack a lot of these issues individually in more depth, but before I go further, I’ll just say that if I had to give this film an overall grade, it would be a B.

This may sound overly positive, considering what I’ve just said, but my grading rubric goes something like this:
A- This is a great movie!
B- This is a flawed movie but I still enjoyed it.
C- This is a flawed movie and I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t hate it, either.
D- This is a bad movie.
F- This is an awful movie!

And I did enjoy myself when watching The Hobbit, primarily because of the cast (special props to Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan, and Andy Serkis, honorable mention to Lee Pace’s memetastic eyebrows), and despite my deeper, storytelling issues. So my score is reflectively forgiving. Others may be more or less severe, depending on what they were looking for, but if you want a good fantasy holiday movie, I think The Hobbit is a great choice, regardless of how disappointing it may be as a film version of the book. Also, the Riddles in the Dark scene is absolutely amazing and worth the price of admission simply on its own. If you need a reason to watch the movie, this would be it.

And now, we’re free to dive into more substantial waters. In the interest of keeping this installment at a reasonable length, I’ll discuss three aspects that have been the object of a lot of controversy- the 48-frames-per-second HFR, The Hobbit as a trilogy, and the overall tone of the film. (In future, if anyone is interested, I’m planning on discussing the cast and more particular changes from the book in greater detail. But for now, I’ll stick with more general matters.)

THE HIGH FRAME RATE
Jackson seems to be an absolute believer in HFR (as are others such as James Cameron, apparently) but he’s hedging his bets by showing both 24 fps and 48 fps versions of The Hobbit. I think it may actually be more difficult to find the 48 fps version, but if you can, I would recommend it, if only because it’s the sort of thing that really should be experienced and judged by you yourself, as a viewer. I don’t know that I’m completely sold on HFR, but it was certainly an interesting experience.

No, I did not vomit or have a seizure as many articles warned I might. The HFR didn’t completely ruin the entire movie. But it did take some getting used to. Initially, all motion seemed to be in fast-forward, or as I’ve heard it put elsewhere, ‘on speed’, which seems a fair description to me. Jackson was definitely correct in saying that it looks more realistic- at several points, I did feel as if I was inside Bilbo’s hobbit hole along with all the dwarves. This was especially apparent in tighter, more constrictive settings. Battle scenes also looked much more visceral and striking with the HFR. But at the same time, the movie also felt less grounded as a result. I’ve seen HFR compared to television soaps, but I think a more accurate comparison would be to an intimately filmed, staged play.

There was also a greater reliance on CGI in this film that was not served well by HFR. Gollum, as usual, looked magnificent, but distance shots of places in particular suffered. I couldn’t help but remember the tangibly real sets in LotR (Edoras in particular) and wonder how many sets were actually built for The Hobbit and how much was green screen. However, I must say that the natural landscape of New Zealand looked stunning and crisp, and there were several shots of the Eagles flying against a light-stained mountain backdrop that were awe-inspiring.

As an aside, I hate 3D glasses. I don’t have a particular aversion to 3D itself beyond the glasses, provided it’s done well. The 3D itself was actually quite good in this movie and not obnoxious at all, but wearing glasses on top of glasses is a massive inconvenience for a lot of moviegoers that really should be eliminated. Rant over.

THE DECISION TO MAKE THREE MOVIES

Is this a moneygrubbing tactic or an expansion for the sake of storytelling? Let’s not kid ourselves- the studios are definitely smelling the money. But is it entirely a corrupt mercenary maneuver? I had my doubts, but in the process of re-reading the book, I realized that a lot more happens in the space of three hundred pages than I remembered. Thinking over everything that happens, it became apparent to me that adapting The Hobbit into one movie would inevitably result in the trimming of a lot of beloved scenes. We felt this a bit in LotR with characters such as Tom Bombadil, but the episodic nature of The Hobbit as a whole would definitely result in the elimination of some more significant or enjoyable aspects simply in the name of time.

This goes back to the fundamental difficulty of adapting a book such as The Hobbit. Even though the book had a brisk pace, everything could fit in a relatively small book because of the narrative structure. There is a prominent narrator that glazes over things, brings things up and then drops them as necessary, allowing the story to move along. This is quite impossible for a movie, at least without a voiceover, which I think would have been iffy at best. For one thing, who would be the narrator?

There have been a lot of complaints about the movie dragging, but I don’t think this is intrinsically related to the three movie split. In fact, the split provides a lot of opportunity to tie the events of The Hobbit much more closely to LotR. Tolkien provides more than enough material to cover Bilbo’s storyline and all the other interesting things that are going on in Middle Earth simultaneously in three movies (assuming that the content of The Hobbit takes up around two) without resorting to filler. For instance, the White Council makes an appearance that sets into context how exactly Sauron began to come back to power in the first place, and promises a greater focus on the power in Dol Guldur than was ever provided elsewhere.

This may not be true to The Hobbit as a book, but it is entirely appropriate for a prequel to LotR- and with the expansion, I believe that the latter is Jackson and Co.’s ultimate goal. And with that, we’ll head into my last and most serious general critique of the film.

THE TONE

Looking at The Hobbit trilogy as a prequel to LotR, rather than a straight-up adaptation of the book, actually explains a whole lot about the way this film works. On the one hand, I really did want a Hobbit movie that reflected the whimsical, fairy-tale nature of the book, because it would have been a lovely contrast to the mythical gravity of LotR. For this reason alone, I’m going to be blasphemous and wish that Guillermo Del Toro had stuck with the movie. Jackson is great for epic sweep and he worked fantastically well for LotR, but being faithful to The Hobbit requires a different vision, which I think Del Toro would have provided. Additionally, Del Toro’s fondness for prosthetics, and animatronics might have given The Hobbit some of the tangibility and earthiness that the Jackson version simply lacks.

Jackson seems to be aiming for unity between The Hobbit and LotR instead. Which is not a bad thing, specifically, but in his effort to make the epic tone consistent, The Hobbit seems to be a parody, at times, of the high fantasy that LotR embodies so thoroughly. For example, the homilies that Gandalf spouts, while touching and wise in LotR, seem overdone and excessive in The Hobbit (through no fault of Sir Ian McKellan, who does more than can be reasonably expected with what he’s given).

The most glaring example, to my ears, occurred when Galadriel asks Gandalf why he bothered to bring Bilbo along. Gandalf goes on this spiel about the power of ordinary people in dark times and so on and so forth. If the writers had excised everything but the final line, “Because I am afraid, and he gives me courage”, the whole scene would have been much more touching without losing any of the intended impact. We know that Bilbo is as ordinary as ordinary can be, and stating that Bilbo gives Gandalf courage implies, in itself, that common people do have some kind of worth that even the great don’t possess on their own. There wasn’t any need to spell it all out for us.

LotR was excessive at some points, but somehow it worked. Unfortunately, that same magic doesn’t seem to hold here to the same extent. The Hobbit opens, not with the classic, understated introduction to hobbits, but with a protracted and rather clunky battle scene explaining the history of the dwarves of Erebor. This was a very early indicator that those looking forward to seeing the old-fashioned, fleet-footed charm of The Hobbit faithfully replicated on screen would be disappointed.

Jackson’s Hobbit is deliberately more epic than Tolkien’s- the film’s dwarves spend a great deal of time fighting their way heroically through challenges in many (many) battles, whereas in the book, they’d just get captured. Bilbo himself is much savvier than he ever was in the books, functioning more like a trickster hero than clueless, innocent baggage, while Thorin’s self-importance is no longer an object of amusement. I suspect that part of Jackson’s reasoning for this change has to do with the worry that a modern audience wouldn’t accept such protagonists, as written by Tolkien, on screen- that they are expecting heroes.

Whether this is a fair question or not, the fact remains that The Hobbit is very different from the book in tone. There is humor, and the movie is genuinely entertaining, but it is less of the old-fashioned, gentle humor of Tolkien and more physical and raucous. Different as it is, this humor is the saving grace of the movie. If Jackson had tried to make The Hobbit a full epic, the fans would have risen in mutiny. As it is, the movie is a strange amalgamation of the simplicity of the original book and the grand ambitions of LotR. It is flawed in some kind of niggling, elemental sense, but figuring out exactly what those flaws are is, oddly, part of the fun.

So I say unto you- go ahead and see The Hobbit if you want to, regardless of what the reviews say. See it with an open mind, without expectations of mind-blowing awesomeness (except the Riddles in the Dark scene, because that was awesome), and then think it over. This is probably an obvious conclusion to make, but in spite of all my criticisms, I still think this movie is worth seeing- and I’m still looking forward to the sequels. As far as movies go, I suppose that speaks for itself.

Comment [10]

I want to let my biases be known right off the bat: I love The Great Gatsby. It’s one of my favorite books, and while I can understand others’ antipathy towards it (plotwise, it’s just Rich People Problems: The Book), whenever I re-read it, I always find something new to appreciate. As it was pretty much inevitable that I’d see the new Baz Luhrmann version, I took the opportunity to re-re-read the book, with a particular eye towards how a cinematic adaptation might work.

Another personal bias: I’m not a fan of Baz Luhrmann. With the exception of the ‘Roxanne’ tango scene, I found Moulin Rouge overly melodramatic, and wasn’t particularly impressed by his version of Romeo + Juliet either. (But to be fair to Luhrmann, I probably wouldn’t enjoy any version of Romeo and Juliet just out of principle.) However, even after seeing the movie, I don’t think that Luhrmann was totally the wrong person to direct a film adaptation of Gatsby. There is that aspect of glitz and glitter in wild parties that Luhrmann captures quite well (almost too well), and probably better than any other adaptation.

And for the record, the Jay-Z soundtrack isn’t nearly as distracting as I thought it would be. I was horrified when I heard autotune in the trailer, but in retrospect, Luhrmann was speaking some sense when he observed that since jazz was now a revered and respected form of music- classy and almost historic- the audience would not be able to understand the wild emotions that it excited during the 1920s. This kind of artistic license might make loyal readers apprehensive, but at the same time, being too deferential to the source material can sink an adaptation by sheer mediocrity. After all, the worst thing that Gatsby can be is a staid period piece, and if nothing else, a Luhrmann film is not staid.

Luhrmann’s decision to deviate from the book in superficials isn’t my problem (okay, sure, Gatsby is about the Jazz Age, but there’s more to it than that); I suspect that in his quest to bring Epic Doomed Romance to the screen, he sacrificed some of the book’s essence. In particular, his interpretation of the characters exchanges ambiguity for stock types suitable for Moulin Rouge 2.

I’ll mention the exception to start off with: Gatsby himself. Luhrmann and Leonardo DiCaprio play up Gatsby’s shadiness, his bursts of anger, and his attempts to control Daisy, with the implication that she might not be so much better off with him than with Tom. (That said, DiCaprio also captures Gatsby’s wistfulness, self-delusion, and charm, although I’m pretty sure he pronounces ‘old sport’ incorrectly through the entire movie.) However, the opposite is apparent in Tom Buchanan, who was never appealing in the book, but inches very close to mustachio-twirling territory in the movie. I could talk about Nick and Jordan in a similar way, but in my opinion, the most glaring adjustments have been made to Daisy’s character.

In the book, Daisy is beautiful and charming, but powerless. This is not only a consequence of being a woman who is stuck in a bad marriage in a rigid society, but also her own weakness of character. For example, when she shows a hint of insight about her condition in the book- her admission to Nick that her life is not going well at all- she immediately follows it with a smirk, as if her cynicism were fashionable. While Daisy is actually unhappy, she is apparently incapable of being sincere about it; she has accepted it and allows her powerlessness to pull her along. Contrast this to Carey Mulligan’s Daisy, who delivers the speech as if Daisy were being entirely sincere about her ennui. It provides a very, very different image of her character- a much more sympathetic one.

Fitzgerald himself admitted that he didn’t give the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby as much depth as it needed in the book, but perhaps it was a fortunate mistake. Nobody comes out of reading The Great Gatsby thinking that Daisy and Gatsby were so perfect together, and if she’d just eloped with him, they would have lived happily ever after. Their love is insubstantial- Gatsby’s great passion for Daisy is representative of his deeper desires; she is only his dream, and ultimately his delusion.

None of this is really addressed in the film version, which only hints that Gatsby and Daisy might be anything more than tragic, star-crossed lovers, despite Gatsby’s flaws. Often, the film slips into unnecessary melodrama to support Luhrmann’s story of doomed love, which usually provokes laughter more often than rapt attention or tears. The most glaring example I remember was the introduction of Gatsby himself, what with the swell of dramatic music as Gatsby turned around in slow motion to reveal- Leonardo DiCaprio’s face in an uncomfortably close close-up. (As if anyone was surprised by DiCaprio being there.) All this goes to show that if Luhrmann is an unsuitable director, it’s less because of his loud aesthetics or his willingness to deviate from the source, and more because of his lack of narrative subtlety.

This is so disappointing precisely because subtlety is what makes The Great Gatsby interesting in the first place. People have complained that nothing really happens, which is true, from a certain perspective. From another, it could be said that Fitzgerald manages to fit a lot into a slim little book that’s not even 200 pages long- and much of that is skillfully folded into the narrative structure. Usually, short books are ‘easier’ to adapt to screen than momentous tomes (though that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from playing around with doorstoppers). However, in this case, Nick Carraway’s deeply subjective and condensed narrative is problematic at best for an adapter.

Luhrmann (who is also one of the screenwriters) gets around this by framing the main story as a flashback narrated by Nick as he is being treated for alcoholism. It makes sense, but at the same time, something about Tobey Maguire’s flat, excruciatingly slow voiceover did not do justice to the Nick who talked directly to you with startling immediateness, as if we were already friends. The words floating across the screen as Maguire said them were also well past pointless. (Because I guess it’s important that Nick is literally writing the story?)

Luhrmann managed to preserve good chunks of the original text in this way, but I couldn’t help but think that with the cast he’d assembled, he’d be better off just letting them act, unimpeded by voiceover and cuts back to the doctor in the asylum (who no one cares about, come on). In fact, my favorite scene in the movie was when Gatsby meets Daisy in Nick’s cottage- one of the few played absolutely straight. Nick’s confused awkwardness and Gatsby’s excessive nervousness were portrayed perfectly by Maguire and DiCaprio, and the result was an absolutely hilarious scene.

Of course, I can’t argue that Nick’s narration is unimportant to the book- it’s crucial. There are all kinds of things dancing beneath the surface there, and Luhrmann probably felt that he couldn’t just toss it aside, even if he didn’t have space to address those underlying implications. This isn’t the first time that voiceover has been criticized- portraying subjective points of view in a film generally is really, really hard.

I’ve heard about one adaptation of The Great Gatsby that deals with this very interestingly: a six-hour, word-for-word stage version called Gatz. It starts with a normal man in an office who randomly picks up a copy of Gatsby and starts reading out loud; gradually, his coworkers meld into the characters of the book, with himself as Nick Carraway, and the dull office becomes the backdrop to the story as real life and novel combine.

But a six-hour film version of Gatsby just wouldn’t work, and the recent trend of splitting books into multiple movies would seem even more ridiculous with a book that is under 200 pages. What was Luhrmann to do when he was faced with such an elementary problem with his medium? I suppose you could say, ‘Well, some books should just be left alone, and The Great Gatsby is one of those books’.

You could probably make a good argument for it, and I won’t lie, I would be interested in seeing more original stories on screen and fewer mediocre adaptations. But when they’re good, movie adaptations have the potential to contribute significantly to the way that you look at the book. It can be really interesting to interpret a story in a way that’s new and timely- a good example is how Apocalypse Now transferred the essentials of Heart of Darkness to the still-recent Vietnam War to make a similar point about human nature.

To be honest, I wanted to see a 2013 version of The Great Gatsby not because I especially love 1920s excess (although it did look very pretty), but because I was interested in its relevance to the modern world. After all, the story is about THE AMERICAN DREAM, as we were all informed in high school, and it’s a dream that is currently in crisis. A new, thoughtful interpretation of a uniquely American story could have been a fascinating insight into Fitzgerald’s society as well as our own.

Was this too much to expect out of a two hour movie? Perhaps. You can’t keep every aspect of the book in the film version, and Luhrmann made an executive decision to focus more on the romance and glamor and less on the social implications. The result was a movie that was silly but entertaining. I didn’t hate it, and it was more or less what I expected it to be, but I can’t deny that I came out disappointed with all the unfulfilled potential.

This is already running excessively long, but the good thing about a mediocre movie is that it forces you to think critically about what you would do to fix it. It’s a good mental exercise, even if I never write yet another adaptation of The Great Gatsby. (Although another Gatsby movie is practically inevitable at some point in the future, especially since this one made money and a Gatsby sequel would be trashy, even for Hollywood.)

So sound off- is Gatsby fundamentally unadaptable? How would you deal with the problem of Nick’s narration in the film medium? (Personally, I think it’d be cool to see a kind of stream-of-consciousness where Nick’s present narration melts into simultaneous flashback somehow…but that might be better suited to the stage, like Gatz.) Did Luhrmann change too much or not enough? What do you think a modern adaptation of a 1920s classic should emphasize or de-emphasize? Onward to the comment section!

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