The Neon Gatsby
This post contains spoilers for the film, The Neon Demon. Hollywood excels at masking the shallow as profound. It is ironic, then, that a film offering a profound critique of Hollywood is widely seen as shallow. The film is Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon , and its surface is so stunning that some critics assume that’s all there is. Yet, there is a striking alienation and darkness beneath its skin, just as the grotesque lurks beneath the seductive glitz and glamour of a decadent party from The Great Gatsby . In fact, Refn's stylized portrait of Hollywood is in many ways similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald's New York. Both explore the romanticization of a corrupt narcissist while exposing the depraved society that consumes him--or her, as the case may be. Though The Great Gatsby is...