hicagoan bond salesman Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) narrates about his time on Long Island Sound near New York, where he visits his cousin Daisy (Mia Farrow) and her Wall Street husband Tom Buchanan (Bruce Dern), who wile away their days playing polo and enjoying being rich together on a sprawling estate. As they ride horses, go boating, and drink copiously at all hours, Tom also spouts racist theories with conviction, clashing with the rumors about his having a mistress not-so-secreted away nearby. At least, that’s what house guest and golf champion Jordan Baker (Lois Chiles) reveals. It’s true, however, and well known to Daisy, resulting in a largely loveless marriage.

Between trips across the water during the summer, Nick resides at a modest apartment in West Egg, neighboring another massive property, this one owned by the stoic Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford), who hosts crowded parties on his enormous, tented lawn, complete with live music and plenty of dancing. Soon enough, Tom drags Nick with him to a rundown garage in a borough littered with ash, where his girlfriend Myrtle Wilson (Karen Black) lives, before taking both of them to a ritzier locale in the city where yet another glamorous gathering unfolds. Even with his double-life, the bulk of his time is spent partying. “Neither one of them can stand the person they’re married to.”

The era is the 1920s, and this depiction focuses heavily on the costumes, the settings, the cars, the music, the dancing, the imbibing, the people, and the gossip (and the humidity). It takes more than 30 minutes transpiring before the mysterious Gatsby finally makes a formal appearance – something of an enigmatic, unknowably affluent figure whose background and history are puzzling and spoken about fearfully, like the Count of Monte Cristo. And he has curious associates, including gambler Meyer Wolfsheim (Howard Da Silva), the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. “I don’t much like parties.”

As the film chronicles the goings-on of various cryptic characters and their relationships, slowly revealing problematic couplings and awkward obsessions, it takes its time building up the roles. Unfortunately, many of the personas are off-putting: Gatsby is intermittently rude and curt and dismissive; Tom is clearly morally conflicted; Daisy is flighty and hysterical, and ultimately regretful solely for a shallow decision; and Jordan is a cheater and something of a troublemaker. Only Nick is reasonable and grounded, but he’s alone in his mediocrity and ordinariness, and likely only continuing his involvements because of the allure of opulence. It’s difficult to be amused by Gatsby and his efforts to rekindle a lost flame with Daisy – the one that got away – when their lives are so unserious, carefree, careless, and unburdened by responsibilities and ethical boundaries. “It makes me sad. And I want to be happy.”

Directed by Jack Clayton (with minimal credits to his name), with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola (having previously penned the scripts for “Patton,” “The Godfather,” and “The Way We Were”), based on the highly regarded novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this is undoubtedly an updated endeavor to bring the work to the big screen for a new generation (the previous adaptation was in 1949). But the story doesn’t translate all that well, what with the nonstop celebratory raucousness; throngs of bodies running about, engaging in the Charleston, and tossing money around on lavish get-togethers doesn’t amount to much, visually. Even the romantic elements lack in poignancy; they’re unadventurous and not particularly emotional, so drawn out that the threats of infidelities being discovered generate almost no tension.

Perhaps it’s a good way to understand the story (the book isn’t exactly an easy read), but in seeing this version, in potentially recognizing the notion of pessimism towards the American Dream during a time of considerable hedonism (mirroring elements in “Wuthering Heights” with a vengeful former lover, bitter abandonment due to social status, and excessive prosperity solving little – they want for nothing but still can’t attain happiness), it becomes apparent that these ultra-rich socialites have nothing much to do. Their dramas are remarkably uneventful, even as examinations of class warfare/struggles/rigidness occur, confrontations and accidents accrue, and religious components crop up to suggest that a deity is always watchful. In the end, which takes painfully long to arrive, when consequences of the neatly orchestrated type finally take the stage, marring some and leaving others unscathed, it only reiterates that the well-heeled are virtually immune to the woes of commoners – a potent message, but not one that generates much entertainment value. “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys.”

– Mike Massie