The Great Gatsby: 5 Changes From The Book That Worked (And 5 That Didn't)

3. Gatsby's Moment Of Violence

There's a great line in the novel, during the hotel confrontation between Gatsby and Buchanan, where Gatsby, after finally cracking under the pressure of Buchanan's taunts, gets a murderous flash in his eyes. As Caraway puts it, "He looked - as if he had killed a man." It's a subtle moment, but it works so beautifully because we finally understand, through this brief break in Gatsby's outer appearance, that there may be danger lurking beneath the smiling exterior. This break is powerful enough to snap the already weakening link between Gatsby and Daisy, and places Tom back in the power seat. It's powerful in its subtlety, it says exactly what it needs to with a nod rather than a grand gesture. The corresponding scene in the movie plays out very differently, and instead of a simple look, Gatsby grabs Buchanan by the collar, shoves him down screaming "shut up! shut up!" and prepares to start beating him to a pulp. Then we get Caraway's "Killed a man" line. And it's dead on arrival. It transforms a figurative moment into a literal one. I understand the need to make this a more visual scene, to give Daisy a more palpable reason to distance herself from Gatsby. But did it really have to be this heavy handed? It trivializes a very beautiful, understated moment from the book, and turns it into a weapon for Luhrmann to beat us over the head with. He seems to think we're too stupid to understand the essence of the conflict unless it becomes a physical one. But so much of the conflict in Gatsby is internal, and we have Caraway, the perfect narrative device, to give us his reading of Gatsby. Therefore it could have easily been done the same way in the movie: Close-up shot of the change in Gatsby's expression, Carraway's line, and a reaction shot from Daisy. Or if they wanted to give the moment a more physical emphasis they could have shown Gatsby break the glass in his hand, and the change in Gatsby would have been evident without devolving into a fist fight. Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but it seems to me the point of Daisy breaking away from Gatsby is to show Buchanan's words are ringing true, and Gatsby can't defend his own delusions enough to keep Daisy drawn to him. But this way, it makes it look like Daisy breaks away from him simply because he raised his fist to her husband, proving himself to be a brute rather than a gentlemen. But the breakdown is about Daisy realizing there's no reality to their relationship. Gatsby's illusion, so well developed in other parts of the movie, is meant to break down in this scene. But the way it plays out makes it seem like it's only because his gentlemanly facade was uncovered. This just trivializes the whole affair and makes an entirely internal conflict into an external one.

On a more basic level, it just seems out of character for Gatsby to do. Gatsby is all about refinement and control, and he's too much of a determined gentleman to allow himself to snap enough to resort to physical violence. Only the gossips at his party conceived of Gatsby as violent, and as Nick himself points out, those people are just "babbling slanderers." And this was a slandering decision on Luhrmann's part, one he could have avoided by reading the scene from the novel just a little bit closer.