Nick Scott Carraway in Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an ironic narrator and a reserved observer. He is almost the same in the film, except that he is a man who scripts memories from a madhouse. It’s an abstraction just like the title Gatsby itself. Somehow, Tobey Maguire, who for most of his life has played similar roles that seem close to his personality, this role is perhaps more suitable for the spectacle in 2013 than any other actor. It was a performance that did not receive proper recognition because many wrote it off for being badly cast. However, Maguire showed the deeper and broken side of a man with masterly restraint. He doesn’t try to steal Gatsby’s attention from Leonardo DiCaprio; in this story of suffering, loss and betrayal, he carves out his own sad character. He humanizes Nick Carraway and revives his pain. Maguire’s performance does not provoke a flood of emotion, but instead acts as a short, sharp and painful sting, a quiet softness that Scott Fitzgerald intended in the novel.
The novel encapsulated the 1920s era, a time of excessive pleasure, the jazz age, the speakers, and was a reflection of the various timelines of Fitzgerald’s youth. The film smelling of wealth and a broken heart, although trying to stay true to the themes of the novel, is a contemporary drama with modern pop in the background, combined with elements of a psychological thriller. The story is told from the point of view of Maguire’s Nick Carraway, an unreliable narrator who, on the advice of his therapist, writes memoirs from a shelter. It’s a complicated plot device, but the film manages it well. He starts talking about Jay Gatsby, the most promising man he has ever met. It sounds strange that such a twisted story of covert fraud can have a whiff of something as healthy as hope, but Nick Carraway of Maguire will convince you that it is. Gatsby is not a hero, instead he’s someone you’d think twice about before you start cheering for him. However, Maguire expresses a quiet admiration for him, bordering on repressed envy, and you are slowly beginning to believe that Gatsby is not the wrong kind, you just know someone who gets involved in illegal activities from time to time.
We go back in time and see Nick Carraway as a disillusioned Midwestern man trying to do something about himself. He will move next to Gatsby’s palace and try to establish himself as a stockbroker. While the first half of the film focuses on pomp, the second half cuts into the heart of the story: the real dynamics between the characters. Gatsby’s passion for the weak Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a woman he lost in favor of the rather harsh and brutal Tom Buchanan. He’ll use Nick to try to get her back, and of course events have spiraled out of control and real motivations will emerge, which will almost turn it into a kind of noir drama. Tom accuses Gatsby of a crime he didn’t commit and of Daisy’s complicity. Gatsby is shot after he was identified in the media as a murderer. Disgusted, Nick leaves town and swears he will never return – yet he takes back lessons from Gatsby’s incredible ability to hope.
Nick sees a real person in Gatsby, apart from his kind charm, a man who lives in a world of “dirty rich” and yet doesn’t quite belong there. Nick understands that he is the only one who promotes the American dream, because everything else seems to be a meaningless mass of luxury. Nick pays the last tribute to Gatsby at the end of the film: “They’re a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch together. “
The Great Gatsby is definitely one of Tobey Maguire’s inconspicuous films. Although the film was often lost in its own grandeur, Maguire stood quietly and served as the perfect balance to the crushed and broken antihero Leonard DiCaprio.
