Myrtle Wilson Wants You To Throw Her Down And Beat Her

Before I begin, and while we are on the topic of movies, I have two things to say:

1. The top doesn’t fall down at the end of Inception, or maybe it does, either way the whole thing is a dream.  Too many unanswered questions, AMIRITE? (I know, this is about a year late...whatever)
2. Cowboys & Aliens reminded me of Blazing Saddles which is not a good thing.  Blazing Saddles is intentionally hilarious in a comedic sense, whereas Cowboys & Aliens takes itself pretty seriously and Harrison Ford is not funny.  But, it was better than Super 8, which was also a dream (I wish).

Now that we have that cleared up...

Myrtle Wilson: Isla Fisher

Shelley Winters, Karen Black, Heather Goldenhersh

“...The thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door.  She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.  Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.” 

That’s Myrtle Wilson, in a nutshell.  Of the main characters, George Wilson and her have the smallest roles.  But their importance cannot be underestimated.  Myrtle believes she married into a lower class, thus causing her to go after someone in a higher class (Tom Buchanan) in hopes of jumping social strata and become relevant socially.  So, in our visual society, the easiest way to show that she may have married below her class is to make her attractive (because beauty equals good).  Thus enters Isla Fisher.  The main concern here, of course, is will she just be the beautiful adulterer that acts as a plot device, or will she be the Myrtle Wilson from the book and become a part of the overall theme of class distinctions, etc.  The pessimist in me says she will be on screen for a total of five minutes and have no real role or personality, but the optimist in me says to just read the book and not see the movie (and the virile male in me hopes she will have a bigger part than Daisy).

Pros: Good acting roll, can play a crazy chick, easy on the eyes, excels in supporting roles

Cons: Subject to just being ‘hot’ and not part of the theme of the film, may appear more desirable than Daisy (which makes sense, until you consider that she is not described that way)

Shelley Winters plays the best Myrtle (Karen Black comes close), as she is just attractive enough to make it believable that Tom would step-out with her, and she doesn’t come off as so vapid that the audience has a hard time seeing the much deeper role the character has in the film (i.e. Helen Goldenhersh).  Myrtle is not just some floozy Tom goes out with that just connects point A to point B and she is run over and Gatsby dies.  Although we do not learn much about her, she also appears as a character married below her class and now she is miserable and she hopes to marry Tom or whatever because he is above her.  But, Tom wouldn’t do that because she is below him, yada yada yada.  Winters does all of that really well because she follows the book’s version of Myrtle.  She has a personality and develops the deeper themes of the novel through good dialogue and craziness when needed.  She is also a key member of one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history:

Karen Black can play a crazy broad, but I feel she isn’t full exploited; she’s locked in a room for most of her time on-screen.  This does allow her to have some kind of interaction with George Wilson, but otherwise she cannot show the full diversity of the character that she begins to show early in the movie.  The Redford-version's New York apartment party scene looks authentic and wild, and Black does a great job of being the center of it all.  The personality of the character is exposed and the plot gets deeper when she is locked in a closet and hit by a car.  Instead of just the bland old locked in the closet and hit by a car we are all used to.  Heather Goldenhersh does none of this, but that does not make her bad.  She does not play a bad Myrtle, per se, but she plays the most basic Myrtle.  I guess the best way to explain it is she is the worst parts of Myrtle for the right reasons.  For example, one would know Darth Vader is a bad guy by just watching five minutes of Star Wars.  But, that doesn’t explain why he is bad, his purpose, etc.  Such is Goldenhersh; she comes off as ignorant, half-baked, but still serving a purpose.  She exists to make Tom look bad.  But, that’s about it.  The character is not developed, thus she gets run over and Gatsby dies.  Tom is looked at as a bigger douche, but everyone forgets she was run over by the end of the credits.  Same old story.  She’s just goin’ through the motions.  I hope the esteemed beauty  Isla Fisher does not have the role to just be believable cheat-bait, leaving movie-goers to say afterward “Oh, she was so beautiful I can see why Tom went after her.  Too bad she got hit by that car and got Gatsby killed.”  A good rapport with her George Wilson co-star Jason Clarke would help to flesh out a Wilson side-story not achieved by the past film.