You can't repeat the past

“Of course you can Old Sport.” Yes, that's Jay Gatsby, the elegant roughneck, inveterate dreamer and immensely wealthy young man answering his neighbor (and our narrator) Nick Carraway. A new film version opens next month (May) directed by Baz Luhrman with his usual panache. It will be a big improvement on the stilted black and white film starring Alan Ladd and most certainly bigger and gaudier than the one with Robert Redford. The casting will be a concern since a mere movie star can only hope to encompass the yearning and mystery of Gatsby, content simply to portray the glamour. The lovely and feckless Daisy seems to come off better in the movies. She is just an illusion after all even though Gatsby loves her and will eventually die for her. The new film will have a lavish sound track but the music I find most evocative of the era is in the four impressionistic piano solos written and played by Bix Beiderbecke, especially “In a mist”. How does it end—like so many American stories, he is shot and killed by a minor character, the same type of nonentity that kills Presidents, mayors, litte school children and thousands of others every year in our gun-loving republic. As for Daisy and her husband Tom, they will just disappear back into their money and continue to bicker like a loveless couple in a Strindberg play. Fitzgerald said that the greatest thing life can give you is youth. That is, if you can dodge the assault rifles and bombs long enough to enjoy it.