Sometimes it takes a foreign perspective to fully realize the artistic expressions of what makes America different. F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is often considered the Great American Novel, and it has so far denied all attempts to adapt whatever greatness it may contain for the screen. Perhaps what it needed all along was an Australian perspective not afraid to bust one of the myths upon which America is built.

The first trailer for Australian Baz Luhrmann's high-stakes adaptation tantalizes with the promise that he may be onto one particular theme of the novel at least: America was, is, and will always be a class system, regardless of the propaganda to the contrary.

The opening of what is a genuinely cinematic trailer that does not look like most other movie previews begins with a curious and potentially resonant image. One of those magnificent 1920s convertible roadsters is making its robust way over a New York City bridge. The convertible is filled with partygoers drinking from a champagne bottle while a female passenger is standing up and dancing.

The film takes place during the Roaring '20s, when bootleg liquor roamed freely and the party was on, but what makes this a curious image is that all the passengers are black, not the expected affluent young whites so often associated with the era. The image instantly precipitates a flood of ideas about the stage of class division in America.

This view of 1920s America rarely if ever seen in a Hollywood movie quickly contrasts with the much more expected scenes of young white people dressed to the nines enjoying alcohol and jazz. The trailer integrates all these upscale jazz-age denizens equally -- with the exception of positioning one person as an outsider through the motif of repeatedly using the name Gatsby as the subject of a question.

Ladies of easy virtue, shady underworld gamblers, bootleggers, flappers, businessmen, and rich matrons all easily co-exist in the world of the trailer for "The Great Gatsby." Gradually, however, the mood shifts away from glamor, parties, and high kicks to a darker, more murky area that delineates the differences between these people with hints of shocking things, desires to run away from it all, and accusations toward Gatsby that he is an interloper.

Ultimately, "The Great Gatsby" becomes a novel about class distinctions and how acceptance in America isn't so much based on how much money you have but how you earned it. As is always the case when conflict arises between an underclass seeking to move upward, there is violence.

The trailer inches increasingly away from the good times of the '20s to the tragedy that ended those good times for all the wealthiest Americans. We may finally be getting a movie version that truly makes Gatsby great.

For more from Timothy Sexton, Yahoo!'s first Writer of the Year, check out:

What makes Gatsby So Great?

The Revolution in American Literature in the 1920

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