luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby opened on the French Riviera with leonardo DiCaprio and his co-star Amitabh Bachchan making a statement on the 66th Cannes red carpet. Big B spoke in Hindi
The Cannes Film Festival got off to a blockbuster, if stormy start, as Baz luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby opened amid heavy rain, as dancing flappers flocked down the Cannes red carpet on Wednesday night, bringing a touch of the Jazz Age to the Croisette. Gatsby stars leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire helped give the festival’s opening day a strong dose of star power.
At the opening ceremony, DiCaprio, joined by his Gatsby co-star, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, declared the 66th Cannes officially open.
Over the next 12 days, dozens of the world’s most artistically ambitious films will premiere on Cannes’ global stage. But Wednesday was a day for blockbusters — both the big-budget Gatsby and Hollywood’s most accomplished director of spectacle, Steven Spielberg.
He is serving as jury president at this year’s Cannes. His presence here is a rarity (he’s had films at Cannes before, including E.T. and Sugarland Express, but never had a movie in competition), and he was received like a visiting head of state, a king of cinema. The lincoln director received a standing ovation at the opening ceremony and was serenaded with a performance of Miss Celie’s Blues from his film, The Color Purple.
He heads the jury that will decide the prestigious Palme d’Or, given to one of 20 competing films, with entries like Coen brothers (llewyn Davis), Alexander Payne (Nebraska) and Steven Soderbergh (Behind the Candelabra). This year’s jury is an intimidating, starry bunch, with Nicole Kidman, Ang lee and Christoph Waltz.
luhrmann’s 3-D adaption of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, starring leonardo DiCaprio, was this year’s festival opener, a choice that surprised many since the film opened last week in North America. Cannes typically takes precedence over release schedules, but Gatsby sails to the Croisette after a robust weekend haul of $51.1 million.
But while Gatsby is getting a victory lap on the Cannes’ red carpet, it comes to the festival with the sting of mixed reviews. Many film critics have taken issue with the movie’s stylistic flourishes. “I knew that would come,” said luhrmann, noting Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel was also initially received poorly. “I just care that people are going out and seeing it. I am so moved by that.” Internationally-respected filmmakers like Roman Polanski (Venus in Fur), Asghar Farhadi (The Past) and Jim Jarmusch (Only lovers left Alive) are to premiere their films in competition.
The international jury also includes Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, Scottish filmmaker lynne Ramsay, Japanese director Naomi Kawase, French actor Daniel Auteuil and Vidya Balan.
“I’m going to have to look at the Sidney lumet film 12 Angry Men, again as a tutorial to prepare myself for the final day of deliberation,” Spielberg said with a smile. like millions of others, leonardo DiCaprio read and loved The Great Gatsby as a teenager. “I remember picking up the novel as a youth and being entertained by it, fascinated with Gatsby but not by any stretch of the imagination grasping the profound sort of existential power that Fitzgerald has in writing this book,” said the 38-year-old DiCaprio.
“Ultimately I was fascinated by Gatsby as a character. I was moved by him. It no longer became a love story to me. It became a tragedy of this new American, this man in a new world where everything is possible, and at a time of great opulence in the 1920s. He was trying to become a great Rockefeller, a great American, and somewhere lost a sense of who he was.”
Not everyone is a fan of The Great Gatsby’s hip-hop flavoured soundtrack, but luhrmann says using modern music was essential to capturing the spirit of F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel.
luckily for luhrmann, Gatsby star leonardo DiCaprio introduced him to Jay-Z, and the superstar agreed to help score the film. Two Jay-Z’s tracks — $100 Bill and the Grammy-winning jam No Church in the Wild — feature on the soundtrack.
He also elicited contributions from the likes of wife Beyonce, Emeli Sande and lana Del Rey.
AP