Luhrmann bowled over by Gatsby review

AUSTRALIAN filmmaker Baz Luhrmann has received the ultimate critics’ review of his The Great Gatsby film, released in cinemas this month, from the granddaughter of novelist F Scott Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald estate trustee and granddaughter Bobbie Lanahan saw the film in New York and said her grandfather would have loved it. Luhrmann likened the reception to his film by some quarters in the US and Europe as similar to what Fitzgerald received when his novel was published, that of him being a clown and his characters marionettes. But Luhrmann said he had now received the ultimate critic’s review and that it had completed his Gatsby ‘‘journey’’.

‘‘An extremely regal woman came out of the shadows and she looked at me, took me by the hand and said, ‘I’ve come all the way from Vermont to see what you’ve done with my grandfather’s book’,’’ the Gatsby director said.

‘‘You can imagine I went cold, I’d never met her. And she said, ‘I think Scott would be proud of this film’ because they have said for many years you can’t take his verse and personality and turn it into a film. And she said, ‘I think you’ve done that and, by the way, I loved the music’.

‘‘So for me that was as good as it possible could get. And for me if we did anything, that made it all worthwhile.’’

Ms Lanahan, who owns the rights to the story published in 1925, said she wasn’t all that interested in the project and since it was being filmed in Australia, one of the few countries where the copyright does not apply, she never thought about it much until it was released. She said she thought it amusing how bowled over the Australian director was over her reaction to the film.

‘‘I think he got it just right,’’ she said of his 3D adaptation.