Our book club's take on 'The Great Gatsby' shifted a lot after we watched the 2013 movie

I mean, for years our group in Seattle just talked about the book's themes on the American Dream. But after we all watched the Baz Luhrmann film version last month, the debate totally changed to focus on the visual excess and whether it matched Fitzgerald's tone. It was pretty wild to see how a single adaptation could reframe a classic for 12 people who'd read it before. Has your club ever had a movie completely change how you saw a book?

2 comments

2 Comments

felixw689d ago

That movie is such a sensory overload, it's hard to take seriously. A bunch of flashy visuals shouldn't really change what you got from the book itself. It's just one director's take, not a new version of the text. Seems like your group might be overthinking it a bit.

lindahunt9d ago

Ever have a movie make you feel like you read a totally different book? I get what @felixw68 is saying about it just being one take, but man, that film got under our skin. We spent a whole meeting arguing about the party scenes. In the book, the excess feels sad and empty, right? But the movie makes it look so fun and cool with all the glitter and music. It made a few of us wonder if we'd been too hard on Gatsby's whole show. Maybe the point is that the flashy trap is actually really tempting, not just obviously sad. My own take got pretty messy (but I overthink everything, so that's on brand for me).