A maximalist, emotionally heightened adaptation that turns Fitzgerald’s social tragedy into a glittering spectacle. It’s uneven in places, but the visual design, performances, and sense of doomed romantic obsession make it memorable and worth seeing if you’re open to style-forward filmmaking.
An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.
Director
Baz Luhrmann
Cast
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan
Curator Review
Verdict
A maximalist, emotionally heightened adaptation that turns Fitzgerald’s social tragedy into a glittering spectacle. It’s uneven in places, but the visual design, performances, and sense of doomed romantic obsession make it memorable and worth seeing if you’re open to style-forward filmmaking.
Best for
Viewers who like lush, theatrical period drama
Fans of romantic obsession and tragic decadence
People who enjoy bold visual excess and pop-inflected soundtracks
Audiences interested in class, status, and self-invention
Skip if
You want a restrained or literary-faithful adaptation
You dislike stylized editing, anachronistic music, or sensory overload
You prefer romance without melancholy or moral rot
You’re looking for a subtle, character-minimal drama
Overview
Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby is less a museum-piece adaptation than a fever dream about wealth, longing, and performance. It treats the Jazz Age as a glittering machine for self-invention, then slowly reveals how brittle and lonely that machine really is. The result is extravagant, sometimes gaudy, and often emotionally effective.
Worth noting
Leonardo DiCaprio gives Gatsby a magnetic, wounded vanity that fits the film’s mix of romance and delusion, while the surrounding cast helps ground the spectacle in social unease. The movie’s biggest strength is its ability to make excess feel tragic: parties, costumes, music, and movement all become part of the same doomed fantasy.
Bottom line
It won’t work for viewers who want quiet elegance or strict fidelity to Fitzgerald. But if you respond to big formal gestures and stories about desire curdling into obsession, this is one of the more distinctive mainstream literary adaptations of the last decade.
Top Letterboxd reviews
georgina (4★) · 16132 likes
fellas is it gay to tell your neighbor that he’s worth the whole damn bunch put together?
russman (2.5★) · 15146 likes
Glad they included all of my favorite musical artists of the 1920s. That Jay-Z sure was the bee's knees.
Ozols (1★) · 9736 likes
Uses of the word "fuck" in Casino: 398. Uses of the words "old sport" in Gatsby: 426.
Matthew Saponar (4★) · 8561 likes
kanye been spittin rhymes since 1922
nickusen · 8368 likes
can’t believe they made a whole movie about the .gif
Themes
obsession, class aspiration, wealth and decadence, illusion and self-invention, unrequited love, social performance, tragedy, American Dream
Topics
period drama, romantic tragedy, Jazz Age, luxury, melodrama, class divide, visual excess, literary adaptation, obsessive desire, decadence