The Great Gatsby (2013)
Where to Watch
- To accurately portray their role in The Great Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio spent weeks conducting hands-on research and rehearsing directly with director Baz Luhrmann.
- The Great Gatsby utilized mostly practical sets and locations to ground the story, a specific choice insisted upon by Baz Luhrmann.
The Great Gatsby is a 2013 American romantic drama film directed by Baz Luhrmann, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire who throws lavish parties at his Long Island mansion in the summer of 1922, all in pursuit of reuniting with Daisy Buchanan, played by Carey Mulligan, the woman he has loved since before the war.
The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire, Daisy's cousin and Gatsby's neighbor, who is drawn into the orbit of the wealthy elite and witnesses the hollowness beneath their glittering world. Baz Luhrmann's adaptation was deliberately anachronistic, fusing Jazz Age aesthetics with contemporary hip-hop and electronic music โ executive-produced by Jay-Z, the soundtrack featured artists like Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine, and will.i.am, a choice that divided purists but successfully translated the novel's themes of excess and aspiration into a language immediately accessible to modern audiences. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as Gatsby captured the character's essential tragedy โ a man whose entire identity is a carefully constructed fiction designed to win back a love that exists only in his idealized memory.
The production design was extraordinary in its maximalism, with Catherine Martin winning the Academy Award for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. The film earned $353 million worldwide. While critics were divided on Luhrmann's bombastic approach to Fitzgerald's subtle prose, the film introduced a new generation to the novel and demonstrated DiCaprio's ability to embody literary characters with depth.
