It’s true.
But it’s not the fault of the film or anyone who worked on
the film. I quite liked it. Baz Luhrman’s slick, dizzy filmmaking melded well
with the slick, dizzy decade of the 1920s. I even liked the modern hip-hop music,
which I felt added to the party atmosphere rather than detract from it. The
cast did a great job with difficult material, and DiCaprio, Maguire, and Mulligan poured their hearts into their roles.
No, The Great Gatsby creeped me out for the same reason that
other films, music, TV shows, and photographs of and about that decade
creep me out:
It, well ... seems so familiar.
Now, I should state right here that I do not believe in
reincarnation. It’s a fascinating concept, and the idea of a cosmic ‘do-over’ is
almost too romantic to pass up. I have a ledger of mistakes and regrets that I’d
love to shelve in my coffin and forget about. Plus, there’s always a chance
that my next incarnation could be something fun, like an eagle or a wiener
dog.
But there’s the problem of evidence. Namely, that there is
none. And because of this, reincarnation is an act of faith, despite the
protestations of apologists. Yes, I know the story of Jeffrey Keene. Yes, I do
know who Dr. Ian Stevenson was. I’m still not convinced.
Yet, the familiarity persists.
By familiar, I’m not talking about the vague recognition I
feel when watching a western. The wagons and cowboy hats and six shooters and wise-crackin’
prostitutes are familiar because I’ve seen them in a dozen other western movies.
No, I’m talking about a deep
familiarity, a type of sensory osmosis that seeps through the screen or through
the audio track or through the portrait.
The feeling of an ivory cigarette holder pinched between two
fingers.
The hot touch of a Ford Model A on a summer day.
The itch at the back of the neck from a wool suit jacket.
The soft clack of a pearl necklace when dancing the
foxtrot.
I’ve told a few friends about this, and those few friends (who do believe in reincarnation) have pointed to my experience as proof. This is proof, and I'm just being stubborn. What else could it possibly be?
And I suppose they could be right. Perhaps
I did live in the 20s. One particular friend declared that she was Zelda and I was F. Scott Fitzgerald. This could be true,
although everyone was someone famous,
weren’t they? Most likely, I was just some dapper ‘sheik’ who, one night, drank
too much wood alcohol and thought he could fly. That sounds more like me.
Plus, I’ve always struggled with The Great Gatsby. It is great,
but I’m not always sure why it’s great. Perhaps my internal editor reincarnated
with me!
Let’s suppose for a moment that all this is true, and I was
alive in the 1920s. What do I do with this information? Investigate through regression hypnosis? Regression hypnosis has even less evidence than
reincarnation. Search for a photo of my likeness? What if I wasn’t a
Fitzgerald, but a Zelda? Then the search for a photo would be futile.
Maybe it’s all psychological. I could be suffering from
Golden Age Thinking.
I first learned about
this disorder from the Woody Allen film, “Midnight in Paris”. In that film,
writer Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) doesn’t like his modern life and yearns for
Paris in the 1920s. In one scene, he and his friends are touring Versailles
when Paul (Michael Sheen) says that Golden Age Thinking is: “The erroneous
notion that a different time period is better than the one, one’s living in.”
This could be true, although I do enjoy my computer and my
Ipod and my pizza pockets. On the other hand, I do understand Gil’s romanticism
of that time period. A chance to hang out with Hemingway, meet Picasso, and
appear in a Dali painting alongside a rhinoceros? Yes please!
A few years ago, I found out that I’m not alone in this
phenomenon. A musician friend told me that she has the same feeling about the
1970s. Somehow, she knows that period
in history, and movies like "Almost Famous" feel all too familiar to her.
Perhaps we all have a comfortable time period, a place in
history where our personality would be better suited. Perhaps that explains it.
Maybe I just like the 1920s.
But that doesn’t feel right either. Like can’t explain the constricting tightness of a bow tie (which
I’ve never worn), or the smoke and sweat stink of a speakeasy, or the baffling
crush I’ve always had on Mary Pickford.
The easiest explanation? I have an overactive imagination.
But as a writer, I’ve spent more time with my imagination than I have with any
flesh and blood person. I know those
ghosts when they come to visit.
These sensations don’t come from the same place. They come from
an Other place. And they are always
fleeting, vanishing once I stop watching the movie, or close the book, or look
away from the photograph.
But when I return to them, they return to me, a vague
reflection in an indistinct mirror.
