Gatsby the Mirror: Why No-One Has Successfully Adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Anti-Hero for the Big Screen

By this time the verdict is in: Baz Luhrmann’s amped-up version of The Great Gatsby (2013), while visually arresting and frenetically paced (at least for the first half), is yet another failed attempt at bringing the titular character to life. There have been many attempts over the years, most notably that other equally frustrating Jack Clayton-helmed 1974 version with Robert Redford as the elusive romantic (anti-)hero. Many theories could of course be served up about directorial approach, casting, scripting, and so on, but my theory is a purely literary one, based solely on Fitzgerald’s characterisation of Gatsby.

The issue is that of authorial perspective. Those who have either read the novel or seen the film(s) know that Gatsby is not the central protagonist. It is Nick Carraway, a once misty-eyed Mid-Westerner who narrates his encounter with Gatsby and his clan after a short but intense summer on “that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York” (10). Everything we know about Gatsby is filtered through his eyes. Nick has a tendency to romanticise Gatsby and describe him in grandiose (and at times contradictory) terms, as in the following passage that details the two men’s first meeting. Nick writes of Gatsby:

He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished – and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. (49)

What is it about these descriptions that stump directors, those champions of visual flair? Nick’s words are difficult for directors to grapple with simply because they are anything but visual. They are in actuality a fine example of hermetic subjectivity. This is to say that Gatsby as a character does not really exist; he only exists in Nick’s perception of him. The descriptions above suggest that Gatsby is a mirror of sorts; he reflects exactly how you want to view yourself. This curious interpretation comes from the fact that Nick is insecure, lonely, and wanting of company and appreciation. In Gatsby the Mirror he finds identification. That Nick is a solitary outsider is emphasised by Fitzgerald throughout the novel. He does not really fit into the fast life of 1920’s New York, does not share the immoral indulgences of its inhabitants, and is always “within and without” (37). (This last phrase is picked up by Luhrmann and accentuated twice, while the Clayton version completely ignores it.) He turns thirty on the day when the house of cards crashes down, and knows that the road ahead for him (and his peers) is without the sweet promise of salvation.

What this tells us is that in order to know Gatsby, we must first know the man who interprets him for us. Nick and Gatsby share an unusual fraternal bond. The former recognises his own loneliness and alienation in the latter. Nick understands better than anyone else in the novel what it is like to be Gatsby, even though personality-wise they are light years apart. (His parting words to Gatsby, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together” make this irrefutable.)

The reason why both Luhrmann and Clayton have failed to give us a convincing Gatsby is because Nick (played respectively by Tobey Maguire and Sam Waterston) is sidelined in both versions, reduced to a mere quirky narrator who morosely recounts a tragic incident. This has an undesirable effect on the way we perceive Gatsby. He comes across as a distant, rather absurd larger-than-life Midas figure that no layperson can relate to. When that final lightning bolt strikes and his life is cut short, we are told no-one bothers to attend his funeral save for his biological father (not mentioned in the Luhrmann version). This leaves us cold, even though Nick, in both versions, tries to convince us that we should care. The fact is we do not and cannot. A narrator who has distanced himself cannot step in at the last minute and pull us back in. There is too wide an emotional chasm between us and Nick (and therefore Gatsby). Even a towering American tragedy at the end of the party fever and the sensual rush cannot bridge it.

This means in order to seek total satisfaction, fans of The Great Gatsby (and there are many) must return to the moldy pages of Fitzgerald’s legacy once more and find it there. For within those pages, Nick is right beside you, whispering in your ear about a bygone era of Dionysiac opulence and his personal hero in a voice laced with longing and regret. Cinema, as formidable a medium as it is, has not yet done justice to Nick Carraway.

All page numbers refer to the 2000 Penguin Classics edition.