Baz Luhrmann does justice to F. Scott Fitzgerald's most intriguing creation: Jay Gatsby, the man referred to in the book title as "The Great." As far as adaptations go, Luhrmann's version beats the 1974 version that starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow hands down. That was a sorrowful, soulful tale of love and youth and whatnot, but this new Gatsby redux wastes no time in penetrating the very core and essence of what "Gatsby" was really about: conspicuous consumption.
There's no doubt Fitzgerald was a raging romantic, but he was at his most romantic about money. In the book, Gatsby throws money around like confetti on the last day of the World Series, and Luhrmann's movie follows suit: The glamor of Gatsby (played with a kind of studied desperation by Leonardo DiCaprio) equals the glamor of his apparently massive wealth, and subsequently the glamor of his obsession, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). Incidentally, Daisy is filthy rich from birth.
In one key scene, Daisy visits Gatsby at his impossibly huge Long Island mansion and he throws open a closet to show her his shirt collection. In a brilliantly executed CGI sequence, Gatsby tosses shirt after starched shirt from the landing of a long and winding staircase: a cascade of tailored shirts, each a splash of lovely color, swoop and swirl around Daisy. And just like in the book, she weeps and makes that famous comment about "so many beautiful shirts!"