If you are too young to have read this book for school or you haven’t read it for your own general interest, fair warning, if I accidentally spoil it for you – oops.
Every once in a while, you have to take your gal-pal out for a girl date, and last night, that’s exactly what I did. My friend Meghan and I decided to have a little sushi date and see the highly anticipated The Great Gatsby.
We went to this amazing restaurant called Tataki right across Montecasino in Fourways – they have amazing sushi. They have an All You Can Eat sushi deal for R130.00, so all I could say was, “Challenge Accepted.” Although I was full to the brim by the end of the night, I ate my money’s worth in sushi so it was a dinner well done.
We went across the road to Montecasino to see The Great Gatsby, and fair warning, do not go to Monte on a Friday night if you aren’t ready to be bombarded with couples and overwhelmed in movie lines. I seldom go on a Friday night so I had forgotten the amount of people that are usually there at those times, so if you want to go to the movies, I suggest you book online beforehand (just for your sanity’s sake).
The Great Gatsby is actually Matric (Grade 12) set work for English, but I had read the book earlier this year because I am the kind of person who will insist on reading the book before watching the movie – I love/hate making mental comparisons between my own vision of the movie and what the director had in mind (I literally finished Twilight the day before I went to see it at the movies), and let me tell you, my imagination fell short of this movie by 295923758604%.
I had just finished learning about the Great Depression in History this term, and Baz Luhrmann perfectly visualised the opulence and extravagance of the Roaring Twenties. I know parties weren’t actually like this back then, but the way everything was so overdone, from the flappers to the decor to the houses to the cars, it was absolutely beautiful. The costume designer must have had a field day working on this – the flapper era is one of my favourites. It was so classy.
Do not even get me started on how perfect Leonardo DiCaprio was as Jay Gatsby. He had the hopeful smile, the anxiety and obsessive compulsiveness down to a T. He had all the subtle Gatsby nuances down (he was also just as annoying with the excessive use of the phrase, ‘Old Sport‘). Carey Mulligan also played a beautifully ditsy and fickle Daisy Buchanan.
Now to stop myself before I say too much, let me just take a few seconds to rave about the movie soundtrack. The film score was done by Jay-Z (and The Bullitts) and on that alone, how could you expect it to be anything less than extraordinary? Florence and the Machine, The XX, Beyonce and Andre 3000, and not to mention the amazing Lana Del Rey featured on this new school + old school soundtrack.
Young And Beautiful by Lana Del Rey was such an appropriate song for the movie and it’s currently one of my favourites.
The only critique I have for the movie is at some places, Baz went a bit overboard and that caused some of the elements (in my opinion) to seem incredibly… fake. That ruined certain aspects of the movie for me but overall, The Great Gatsby was A Great Movie (maybe Leonardo DiCaprio can finally get an Oscar…?). I highly recommend it.
xo
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