GATSBY FOR KIDS
America’s internet is overflowing with a bunch of images from the set of Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby film, now shooting in Australia, with Leo DiCaprio as JG, Tobey Maguire (as Nick I think?) and Carey Mulligan as Daisy.
The pictures show two things:
1. Luhrmann and company are of course unimpeachable when it comes to creating exquisite period details.
2. Our young actors today, even the finest of them, are just too much of lightweights to carry off historical roles. We are not capable anymore of portraying a time when people didn’t act like pouty teens well into their 50’s.
That is not a slam on their acting abilities. Today’s actors are far more versatile and technically capable than actors of the golden age. But it’s just who this generation is, who we are. We can’t just put on maturity anymore than we could put tusks and be convincing wooly mammoths.
Maybe it’s just that we favor actors with baby faces, but I don’t think so.
Leo DiCaprio is now 37 years old, but even in suit and tie he still carries himself like he’s a child playing dress up. Even in J. Edgar, where he was pretty good (though the film wasn’t) it was never far from your mind - could this child really be running a whole government agency? Because he was playing a psycho running a government agency he could kind of get away with it there.
Here is what Cary Grant looked like when he made Suspicion at age 36.
Jimmy Stewart was 37 when he made It’s a Wonderful Life and he looked like this:
Carey Mulligan is 26. When Lauren Bacall was 25 she looked like this:
I mean, I guess we can still do rock opera versions and stuff like that. But when it comes to authenticy period adaptations, it’s time we accepted that our minds can no longer grasp what it meant to be people who got dressed up just to come to the dinner table.
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