Censored by The Indy ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

31 May

I think that it was to The Great Gatsby review: Long, gaudy and flawed, but there is much to admire in Baz Luhrmann’s stonking lack of subtlety that I tried to add a comment.

I added it once or twice more, still 'awaiting moderation', and have now recalled that I still have it, so here it is :


This review is not alone in finding what I interpret as 'a mess' in this film, yet a seemingly 'compelling one' :

It sounds as if the film's 'all-over-the-placeness' should just be an absolute irritation, yet it isn't. (However, are critics indulging in this release a quality in the shower-singer story-line in To Rome with Love (2012) that they too easily dismissed, whereas, for me, Allen gave a potent parody of the type of excesses to which operatic direction and staging - let alone Hollywood films - are prone ?)

I'm going to err on the side that what I have been dubbing 'The Great Fatsby' is irritating, and not bother, because, with any number of reviewers having pointed out different out-of-whack features, not one of those is going to fail to jar - all at once and cumulatively.

I don't recall anyone drawing attention to what length this feature runs to (so probably it in no way drags), but I was even unimpressed the other day by hearing an allegedly 1920s-style number with Bryan Ferry, whose Roxy Music always sounded lively and jazzy anyway - I don't choose to spend time or the premium on a 3D film that possibly might as well be Marvel or Manga as F. Scott, because, although it may be classier than many of its 'blockbuster' peers, what worth does it have in (hypothetical) absolute terms ?

I know how I felt with On the Road (2012), which may have been doing its best to render Kerouac on screen, but left me wondering Why have bothered ?


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