How do you update a classic story and make it a film that will resonate with contemporary audiences? That's a question that filmmakers have been asking for years. Another variation on that question would be, How do you turn modern audiences on to a period film? Obviously, the story, the director and the casting play a big part. But regardless of the names behind the film, the faces on the screen or even the timelessness of the story, audiences need to feel as if the movie speaks to them where they are in their time. And the most proven way for a film to relate to modern audiences is through it's soundtrack.
Hollywood has been putting modern music into period films for years...with various degrees of success. The example that comes to mind most glaringly is A Knight's Tale, which starred the late Heath Ledger. It was a fun, entertaining story about a medieval knight, but I was totally turned off by the filmmakers' use of Queen's rock n' roll classic We Will Rock You during major fight scenes in the film (If I recall, they also used some classic AC/DC songs). And I wasn't the only viewer to be turned off by this. Well-known critics panned the movie for this very reason. In our minds, modern music took us out of the fantasy of being in the middle ages.
This brings us to director Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby. If you've seen the previews or read the hype, you know that Jay-Z was a major contributor to the soundtrack along with other well-known rappers and hip hop artists. Of course neither rap nor hip hop were around in the 1920s and my fear was that the use of such music in this period film would detract from my fantasy of being in 1920s' New York with the film's characters. I must admit that I thought my fears were confirmed when I first heard the music in the early parts of the movie.
But I was surprised...and ultimately proven wrong. The more the story unraveled and I was sucked into it, the less I thought of the rap and hip hop music as being from our time. It began to feel that the music from Jay-Z and the other artists actually belonged in 1920s era New York. I didn't have time to question that during the movie because I was too caught up in the great drama. But later on, I asked myself the question, why did this obviously modern music seem to belong to an era that occurred almost a hundred years ago?
After some thought, I realized the answer to my question. Aside from the fact that the musicians affiliated with the film are talented professionals, the reason the music fit so well is because it matched the theme of the story. Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the screenplay by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce was trying to make a statement about how the nouveau riche (new rich) started with nothing, achieved riches in a single generation, but ultimately longed for acceptance by the old money people. What other musical genre better speaks to that theme than rap and hip hop? Most of these artists started in the inner city ghettos, achieved wealth and popularity fairly quickly and their music is now considered mainstream. They are transforming society with their newly acquired flash the way Gatsby transformed 1920s New York in the movie.
Certainly not all rap and hip hop artists strive for the establishment's approval the way Gatsby did in the film, but many of them do. To understand my point, simply listen to the lyrics of some of your favorite songs from this genre. These songs talk about money: the need to acquire it, the usefulness of it and what it means for them once they have acquired it. They're Jay Gatsby in the 21st Century. Hopefully, they won't meet with his tragic demise and I don't think they'll live out the rest of the theme of the story...which is that the establishment will never accept the nouveau riche and will actually eat them up and spit them out instead. I think rap and hip hop are legitimately changing popular tastes and are becoming accepted in a way that Jay Gatsby could only wish for.
So my hat goes off to Baz Luhrmann and the extremely talented filmmakers behind The Great Gatsby for creating a great film and for using the soundtrack to feed the theme of the story. I'd also like to extend my appreciation to Jay-Z and the other artists who created a soundtrack that not only paid respect to the Jazz Age, from which this story originally came, but also added their own modern flavors to it in a way that enabled contemporary audiences to identify with a by-gone era.
The 2013 version of The Great Gatsby is an incredible film that should be appreciated by the eyes and the ears of all who sit in it's audience. I highly recommend it.
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