Opening on a beautiful sweeping shot of New York in the Jazz Age, the trailer for Luhrmann’s upcoming adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel begins with the throb of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.” Under any other circumstances it would seem odd to see women in flapper dresses shimmying to a hip-hop jam, but this is a Luhrmann movie and somehow his deftness for remixing contemporary music into historical material makes this work.
The smoothness of the blend is helped by the fact that the part of “No Church in the Wild” playing in the trailer doesn’t involve either Jay-Z or West rapping — it’s just the hook that’s sung by Frank Ocean and The-Dream. Here, in an interesting twist, the MC duties are left to the voiceover by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire): “New York, 1922. The tempo of the city had changed sharply. The buildings were higher, the parties were bigger. The morals were looser and the liquor was cheaper.” It’s a line not actually from Gatsby, but a paraphrase from Fitzgerald’s 1932 essay “My Lost City.” But again, it’s Luhrmann’s world, we just dance in it.
Following the “Church” intro the tempo shifts, this time to incorporate Jack White’s cover of U2’s “Love Is Blindness” as we see further images from the affairs of Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) unfurl on-screen. Again, a non-jazz song in a Jazz Age film. And again, it works.
How Luhrmann pulls these things off (when they do indeed work) has always been something of a pop culture mystery. No one could’ve predicted Radiohead would play well in the Romeo + Juliet reboot, but it did. Throwing Nirvana lyrics into Moulin Rouge shouldn’t have flown either, but somehow it clicked. When Luhrmann is on, he’s on.
Whether he’ll be able to pull off another cinematic remix wonder with The Great Gatsby — and this time in 3-D! — remains to be seen, but this trailer looks beautiful and it’ll be fun to watch Luhrmann try.
The Great Gatsby hits theaters Dec. 25, 2012.
