Woolf, Russell, and Eliot; New FILM Criticism
Blinking as they emerge from the dark theatre, Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot exit into the cinema lobby, the faint strains of Beyoncé drifting out the door before it swings shut. Russell is munching on the cold remains of his large popcorn, while Woolf slurps primly the last few sips of her Dr. Pepper. Pausing in front of the array of movie posters, “THE GREAT GATSBY” illuminated behind them, the trio stops to discuss the film they just viewed.
Russell: So, what did you both think of this new incarnation of Fitzgerald?
Woolf: Rubbish. The most lowbrow, heavy-handed re-imagining of a classic American novel I’ve seen in my life.
Russell: Oh, surely it wasn’t all that bad? The costuming was divine, the score somewhat…. Imaginative.
Eliot: I cannot even imagine what Scott would say to this. Hopefully Zelda is keeping him busy, because once these reviews get into the papers his heart would simply break. And that rap noise! Whatever Jay-Z had to do with a creation of a jazz-age soundtrack I simply cannot conceive. I lived through it, I ought to know.
Russell: But cannot we at least appreciate an attempt to create something novel, while still utilizing a traditionally monolithic figure in American literary culture? Isn’t that what we’ve often talked about, the preference for the novel over tradition in our culture? The concept of taking material from a traditionally great, powerful novel points again to the importance of tradition, and acknowledging tradition, over a love of the novel for its own sake?
Woolf: A re-imagining is one thing, dear. This had little to no respect for the very tradition it depended on.
Eliot: It is once again the fetishization of the novel of over the traditional. I do wish I wouldn’t have had to come to this conclusion—in theory, one would assume that a production of The Great Gatsby could both make use of modern film technology while still acknowledging and honoring the novel itself. This thing, this pageant of self-congratulatory three-dimensional filming, this orgy of color, brooked no quarter for tradition whatsoever. It took tradition, chewed it up, and spat it out in a burst of confetti.
Russell: To be fair, Eliot, isn’t that in a way exactly the tone that one would expect to see in a novel or film that satirizes and critiques the very pageantry of the Jazz Age?
Woolf: It’s that very connection I’m failing to see, Russell. I have to side with Eliot here. There were a few moments where I thought Luhrman recognized the irony of what he was doing, but then we slipped right back into a clunky, overly obvious CGI of the green light winking in the distance, and you get the feeling that Luhrman bought into the spectacle of his own production without fully committing to it.
Eliot: Exactly. What tradition, what literary significance could have been present was forced to take a backseat to the next best thing in filming technique. Though this film pretends to marry the traditional and the novel, it merely cannibalizes the traditional in its search for newness.
Russell: Perhaps we should consider that we are not the target audience for such a movie?
Woolf: Yes, and I’m sure you’re right. Everything about this movie, from the whirl-wind summary (as if one can do such a thing!) of twenties culture to the soppy, retrospective narration of a sanitized Carraway points to a film directed at novices of the study of literature who can’t remember the SparkNotes they read for Gatsby in high school and wanted to see the new Leo DiCaprio movie.
Eliot: Exactly, and it is that particular final scene you mention with Carraway that soured what little good opinion of the movie I had left. Not only was it extremely obvious, to spell out to the reader one of the most beautiful closing lines in literature and the title of this novel that doesn’t exist within the novel in literal letters on the screen. It irritates me beyond words when an author is presumed to be a character in his own novel, or Daisy to be merely a thinly veiled portrayal of Zelda. Nick Carraway is not the author of Gatsby, and Fitzgerald is not Nick Carraway. To presume so is to take away the power of the text itself to communicate meaning—to reduce literature to mere autobiographical notation is a disgrace.
Woolf: Well, in fairness, a scholar of Fitzgerald might have grounds to assume a certain autobiographical strain to Fitzgerald’s work—
Eliot: I disagree! Because how can we presume to know the intent of the author? Perhaps Fitzgerald actually wrote Gatsby as an allegory for Christ’s second coming. Perhaps Gatsby is based on old war stories. We can presume none of this, nor any autobiographical meaning, by referencing text alone, as should be our guide.
Listening carefully while finishing the final few kernels of popcorn, Russell stands and makes for the door. Russell: Come come, there will be enough time for evangelize for the death of the author another day. Coffee? The small group moves for the door, chatting and groaning over the fine details of the film.