▐ Written by Ardor
For a beloved woman, he bought a luxury villa by the bay.
He arranged the villa like a palace, singing and singing at night, and the lights were brilliant.
He let countless strangers squander there, just to get her attention, looking forward to seeing each other one day.
She lives across the bay. In the night after some of the hustle and bustle of silence, he stood alone on the dock, looking in the direction of her house.
01.
This infatuated man is Gatsby, the protagonist of the American writer Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.
The novel has been adapted into a movie five times, and this scene alone has touched countless readers and audiences.
The woman's name was Daisy, and she was a rich woman. He was an officer when he met her, and they fell in love. Unable to wait for his return after the war, she had become the wife of a rich man.
Gatsby in the mansion waited for five years to finally meet her, and he looked at her as he had done, and their old feelings were revived.
However, reality deviates from dreams. In an accident, she killed her husband's mistress, who blamed Gatsby. He was shot dead by the husband of the deceased in a swimming pool.
He had been waiting for her call before he died, but after his death, she did not show her face. There were so many "friends" who had squandered in his house, and not a single one had attended the funeral.
The narrator is clearly expressing some disappointment and anger, exposing the ruthlessness and shamelessness of the rich.
However, behind this, the novel and the film clearly leave a foreshadowing, which is synchronized with the main line, that is:
How did Gatsby get into the ground?
02.
Some say Gatsby is a royal relative, some say he is a bootleg, he himself says he read Oxford, is the descendant of a rich man, his family is dead, and he inherits a large inheritance.
He even presented evidence for his claims, but he panicked, and the only person who attended the funeral after his death was his father, who was not surnamed Gatsby, his surname was Gates.
In fact, he was in the illegal securities business. The novel's expression of this is more subtle, and it gradually appears in dialogue with Nick (the first-person narrator of the novel and the film).
➤ Once, it was Gatsby talking about Mel Wolfsim (a "friend" who appeared at his night party).
"Mel Wolfsim?" No, he's a gambler. Gatsby said: "He was the one who manipulated the World Baseball League behind the scenes in 1919." ”
This surprised Nick. Of course, he remembered that the 1919 World Baseball League had been manipulated, but it never occurred to him that one person could provoke this incident that had played with the beliefs of fifty million people.
"Why didn't he go to jail?" he asked.
"They can't catch him, man. He was a clever man. He said.
Another time, wolfsim talked about Gatsby.
Wolfsim: "I first saw him when he walked into the Wynnbrand Casino on Forty-third Street looking for a job. ”
"You enabled him to start a business?" Nick asked.
"It wasn't just me who made him!" I made him. I went from a slum with nothing to the Gatsby I am now. ”
Nick said he didn't know if the partnership also included the 1919 World Baseball League deal.
He realized by then that Gatsby was in the criminal business.
➤ Another time, it was a stranger's phone.
"Something happened to Little Parker," the man said quickly, "and he was caught by them while delivering securities over the counter." The guys got the news from New York five minutes ago and knew the number of the securities in advance. Who could have predicted that? ”
The call was addressed to Gatsby, and upon hearing Nick say that Gatsby was dead, the man immediately hung up.
The cinematic lens reinforces the mystery of the telephone, with Gatsby often making phone calls at specific times and answering calls in a way that suggests that he is not engaged in a business that can withstand the sun.
03.
What's so great about Gatsby?
Having seen the movie, many people have left such doubts.
He's rich, but his money isn't coming clean. In fact, he is just a criminal who has not yet "had an accident" and has not yet been imprisoned.
He values love, but love is built on wealth. The wartime uniform masked his poverty, and he did not have the courage to meet her when he did not have the money after the war. Her performance after his death made this love seem particularly weightless, unworthy, and even despicable.
He was so gregarious and so generous that after his death, none of them attended the funeral.
Behind the superficial materialism is the fragility of the spirit.
The 2013 version of the film "The Great Gatsby", directed by Bazruman and starring Little Plum, opens in the psychiatric rehabilitation department of a nursing home, Nick is undergoing psychiatric treatment because of alcoholism, insomnia, anxiety and irritability, and all the plots behind it are from his narrative.
The film's narrative is entrusted to a mental patient, a situation in which you believe it or not, you don't have to believe it, but what you want to present is not really a spiritual patient's birthday. In fact, no matter who is in such an era, it is difficult not to lose in the drunken dream. The film gives the audience such a perspective, to see that era, to feel that kind of reality.
It was the United States of the 1920s, and urban development was almost crazy, stocks were at their highest, and morality was degraded.
However, after nearly a hundred years of distance, coupled with the help of the Internet, the movie does not seem to be too distant from the reality around it.
4
Honestly, I thought about Gatsby more than once during this time.
The death of writer February River reminds me of Gatsby because of what happened to him after his death.
Before his death, he had asked his family not to bother too many people because of his death. Yet too many people insisted on harassing him, and the news of his death on the Internet was followed by near-overwhelming criticism of him.
Whether his work is worthy of respect or not, it will take time to build a coffin, but so many people can't wait to wait for it when people's bones are not cold.
That hustle and bustle makes people suspicious of the people of the times, too unkind. Not authentic, not humane.
Liu Qiangdong made me think of Gatsby, not only because they were about the same age, but also became rich. From Liu Qiangdong's sexual assault to Liu Qiangdong's innocence, behind the superficial victory, Liu Qiangdong actually lost very badly. That is not only the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in the stock market, but also the collapse of his personal image. In particular, after being acquitted, the details of the room revealed by his lawyer and his related statements not only did not help, but also had no positive impact on his personal image.
In fact, as a microcosm of the "upstart", he let people see the spiritual crisis of this era, rich people drunk and gold.
Recently, the "female version of Jobs" in the United States, which has become popular on the Internet, has also become the "female version of Gatsby". She is at the top of the rich list, a model for young entrepreneurs, not only to the major news media, but also invited by Obama to a state dinner. However, in fact, everything is nothing more than a scam, she is a super big liar, when the veil is lifted, she has nothing but sin.
In today's day and age, how many people live a life of spending money like Gatsby, how much of the aura of wealth cannot withstand the carving of the sun.
"The Great Gatsby" is an elegy of the Jazz Age, which shows the spiritual crisis of the people of an era. It moves the reader and the viewer, because what remains is not only sighing, anxious, but also more contemplative.
Gatsby, nothing remarkable.