The Great Gatsby, a famous novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has finally been encountered by Baz Luhrmann, the director of Moulin Rouge, and Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor who presented the best acting as a villain from a new film, Django Unchained, and other films, Titanic and Inception. The film, The Great Gatsby, released recently. And big responses were apparent from many female audiences from North America.
Simply speaking, the synopsis is that Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) falls in love with Daisy (Carey Mulligan) when he is very young. However, the love with her does not continue as they get older. Because he believes that he didn’t have wealth or money to keep her and make her happy, he devotes his life only to become wealthy, so that someday, he could attain her. He eventually becomes enormously rich, which is clear for all to recognize. He purposely gets a mansion around where she lives and holds a magnificent party every day at his place where everyone is invited, in order to make her come to him. However, Daisy has already married Tom (Joel Edgerton), who is as rich as Gatsby. In the end, Gatsby successfully meets Daisy again, as his neighbor Nick (Tobey Maguire), Daisy’s cousin, helps him. Gatsby believes that he became rich so he could win her over even though she is already married. However, his dream doesn’t come true and the film meets a tragic ending. (Refer to the film details for a detailed synopsis)
What Gatsby truly wanted was Daisy. His life goal was to make her entirely his, and in order to achieve his goal, he attained wealth and success. However, Daisy had a different dream from Gatsby’s. In the world she lived in, what she wanted was only money. If she could have money, it didn’t matter who she was with, either Gatsby or Tom. The worlds in which Gatsby and Daisy lived are just like water and oil. Because they had different dreams and goals, they could not be together happily and it had a tragic ending.
We feel sympathy while watching this film. The story of the Great Gatsby is not only a story from a novel or a film but also applies to our reality. Modern people feel loneliness to some extent. Everyone is lonely because we are not together even though we live together in the world. As humans live trapped in their own world that they have made, we are not living in the true world but in the world of the mind that we ourselves have made. Because we cannot understand each other, we cannot be together and continue to have conflicts and thus, eventually, everyone becomes lonely. If 7 billion people live in the world, everyone lives in 7 billion different worlds. As Gatsby’s world and ideals were different from Daisy’s, they could not be together forever in the end. Likewise, what we really need to do in the world is to destroy the world of the self that the self only has, become one with the true world and live together in the true world. We feel lonely, painful and longing because we live trapped in the world of the self. Although we try to find the genuine love and meet someone else, that person also lives in the world of himself so we can’t ever become one and the genuine love could not exist. The time has come when everyone breaks free from the false dream, false ideal and the false world that we ourselves have made and receives a new birth in the true world so that we can live happily with one mind and one dream; it is the time when we can all live together forever. Such a good world has come. Countless people are already living like that. Because the method has arrived such that everyone could become one, I hope everyone lives happily and coexists as one in the world.
To conclude, let me introduce writing by Master Woo Myung, the Great Master of this generation whom I admire the most:
From his book <The Way To Become A Person In Heaven While Living>
From the World of Hardships to a World Free of it
Do you find it easy to live in this world?
During a time when the world changes everyday
People cannot keep a steady mind
People are out of their minds
Do you find it easy to live in this world?
When times change
It is difficult to live in such changing times
When times change
One who changes with the times
Has little trouble making ends meet
One who resists the changing times
One who is far from reality
Has trouble making ends meet
Because the world does not follow your selfish expectations
Because the world does not unfold as you please
Your life is difficult
However when you live unbound to
Either living well or living with difficulties
When you live from the world’s perspective
And work diligently, just do your work
Live without self
And just live without your self that has difficulty
Then there is no pain, no hell and no anxiety
And you will live a good life
Instead of blaming the world and others
A person must cleanse that mind of his that blames others
Then the world becomes bright, the world becomes one
One who knows that it is not the fault and mistakes of others
But that it is his own fault, and that everything is his own sin
Is the wise one
When you repent your sins
And live as truth, the true self
The world is heaven, the world will be full of pleasure
It is the one world
Where there is no ‘this world’, no ‘that world’
No matter how hard you try to live for the self
There are no results, there is no meaning or value
But if you live for the world
In the one world
There will be pleasure in the mind
There will be contentment in the mind
Because there is no fortune, no Truth in their minds
People are in wanting
They have no place to rest in their minds
People just follow the false and end up in the false world
It is a life with no meaning, no value
When one builds false fortunes within his self
And accumulates false fortunes within his self
There is no meaning
The matters of life pass like wind and water
His life is difficult
Because he lives only for his greedy self
When one pursues only wealth and fame, his demons grow
There is no meaning; life is only full of falseness
Only a person who has Truth within the true mind
Will live eternally with that fortune, free of troubles
This is the best way of living
