Starbound Lovers: F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Friday, May 10, 2013

The Great But Not-So-Sci-Fi Gatsby

5:01 PM | Posted by Bella Street | | Edit Post

I saw this movie today and really loved it, and will attempt to tie it to something sci-fi-ish so I can talk about it here :)

I'm a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald's work and have read The Great Gatsby three times. My very favorite works of his are the short stories, more specifically The Offshore Pirate.

What draws me to Fitzgerald's work is his ability to paint pictures with words. To wit.:

She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide.

In the same way, Baz Luhrmann (director of the film I saw today), can paint pictures with color, sound, symbolism in a breathtaking way. Which is why I'm a big fan of his works like Strictly Ballroom and Romeo & Juliet. The Great Gatsby has been made in film before, but I think Baz is uniquely qualified to take the imagery of a talented writer and apply it to the canvas of the screen.

Entertainment aside, great writers/filmakers/storytellers of all kinds take characters and tell a tale that not only resonates with us personally, but the wider world at large. I think one of the reasons The Great Gatsby endures as a story is it speaks the the hopes and dreams and deceits we all experience...and what happens when we achieve it--or not. There have been other economic boom times beyond the 1920s, too. So the film I saw today seemed relevant in a societal way as well.

And that's what keeps readers reading--empathetic characters who interact in their given world to reflect what we feel and experience in our own lives. That can come through literary fiction, romance novels, stories around a campfire, and oh yeah...science-fiction.

It's sci-fi that uniquely imagines a world of what could be and how characters might react in it--giving a sense of time of place whether off world or on--while resonating in a timeless way.

Told you I was going to connect it. :)

PS: Go see the movie!

Labels: Baz Luhrmann, F. Scott Fitzgerald, literary fiction, Romeo and Juliet, sci-fi, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, The Offshore Pirate | 0 comments

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