2. The Soundtrack
As I have already qualified, the score for The Great Gatsby is wonderful, and works extremely well with the visuals and the narrative arc of the central romantic relationship, but the same cannot be said of the soundtrack. Listened to on its own, The Great Gatsby OST is actually a fantastic album - the production quality is sky-high and the musical arrangement of songs is wonderfully creative, melding classical influences with modern singers, composers and producers to great effect - but it is far too intrusive and off-putting when married with Luhrmann's period setting. You can see the intention - to bring a modern touch and a creative disparity between the setting and the music to reflect on the universality of culture and the timeless importance of certain stories. Luhrmann has done it again - bringing Nirvana to Moulin Rouge for instance - but those former instances felt an awful lot more integrated, and just as Tarantino took one step too far in his own modern music approach to Django Unchained, the same is true of Luhrmann and Jay-Z's soundtrack here. Music should never detract from the viewing experience, and in some cases here, it just plain did. Still, like I say, as a collection of music in its own right, the OST is in fact a joy.