4. Turning Tom Buchanan Into A Full-On Villain
Tom Buchanan is a first class A-hole. We get it. We see it from his constant cheating on and mistreatment of Daisy. We also see how he ruins Gatbsy's romance with Daisy and inadvertently causes his death. Inadvertently being the key word. But for some reason Luhrmann decided this wasn't enough. After Myrtle's death, Buchanan consoles her unhinged husband by telling him it was Gatsby who hit her with his car, Gatsby who was probably also screwing her, and that really something ought to be done about about Gatsby. He essentially hands Wilson the very gun that shoots Gatsby in the back. I have a real problem with this. It's true that in the book Buchanan also panics and tells Wilson that Gatsby killed Myrtle. But he does it in a panic, because Wilson just showed up at his house to murder him. If I had a gun pointed at my head I'd rat on the next door neighbor who screwed my wife too. I don't mean to defend Buchanan, he's a lousy guy. But the way Luhrmann tries to transform him into a conniving arch-villain is too over the top. It doesn't play right, and he feels like a totally different kind of character. It dehumanizes him to the point where we can't begin to fathom why Daisy was ever attracted to him. And it undermines the dynamic Fitzgerald tried to create with Wilson and Buchanan. We're supposed to understand that Gatsby's tragedy is a result of his own carelessness, and Wilson's madness a result of tragedy. The lifestyle these people have lived led to their own undoing, without outside help. By adding in Tom as an outside manipulator, it makes Gatsby's tragedy no longer self-inflicted. How can Gatsby be the architect of his own destruction when there's another architect in the building? On an even simpler level, it really just seems out of character for Buchanan to do. He's a pompous ass, yes, but not a murderer. And would someone who condemns Gatsby for being a bootlegger really be okay with murder? I think not. We're supposed to see Buchanan, in Fitzgerald's words, as a childish brat who we almost feel sorry for. But we certainly don't feel sorry for him after this. We just wish Wilson's bullet landed in Buchanan's back instead. And speaking of acting out of character...