Dwelling on the past

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Watched the movie last week and the ending where the all time famous quote 'boats against the stream' rolled out, I thought about Jady's blog title. I also thought about how I never sat through this great novel before. Maybe now 30 just like Nick Carraway in the story, it's the right time to revisit this literary classic.

As for the movie, the visuals are stunning and there's not an ounce of unwanted fat on the storytelling. Baz Luhrmann knows how to add the right touch to a love story. 'Be sure to watch it in 3D' was the advice we got before heading to theatre and gladly we heeded (only complaint is the sorry size of the screen).

Seeing how Gatsby is 'betrayed' by Daisy, LM is grumpy that feminine creatures are unfathomable lies that bring the death of good-hearted men. I honestly feel that his 'over reaction' is quite honest. If any consolation, I reassured him Daisy is just a symbol of post-war American dream, a bubble to burst. Or she could be 'the past' that Gatsby so resiliently wanted to relive. Anyway, it often seems any attempt to escape into the past is bound to disappoint because our memories are heavily retouched with special effects, like a plain looking girl before and after make-up. Even if the object is the same, the subject has changed with time. Woody Allen says it all in Midnight in Paris.

Perhaps ironically, people's addiction to the 'past' is the reason why this novel became popular not IN Fitzgerald's time but AFTER his death, and so goes the case with a bunch of other things.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

I'm gonna highlight 'beat on' instead of 'into the past'.

Carey Mulligan in Vogue's 2013 May issue. Dreamy ain't it ;)