West Side Story
When Steven Spielberg shuffles off of this mortal coil, the discussions of his career will be fascinating. I’m especially excited to see what is written about his post-“Schindler’s List” decades. While I will always remain a devout fan of “Jaws,” “Close Encounters,” the “Indiana Jones” movies and “E.T.,” I think his work since winning an Oscar is more important to discuss, and not just because of its subject matter. His explorations into sci-fi have reflected a reality of uncertainty and moral questions to be explored. His escapism is tinged with feelings of pasts that the protagonists may want to have rewritten. And his historical dramas do not flinch away from the complexities of life.
With “West Side Story,” Spielberg continues to challenge himself with not only another collaboration with screenwriter Tony Kushner (“Munich,” “Lincoln”), but his first musical. In choosing the musical by Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, they have continued their interest in narratives in which two sides attack each other because of beliefs rooted in bigotry. At the center of “West Side Story” is a love story that Laurents updated from Romeo & Juliet, but rather than it be between warring families, it’s about two groups of immigrants- ones whose families have been here for generations (the caucasian Jets), and ones whose families are just getting here (the Puerto Rican Sharks). Kushner’s screenplay puts meat on the bones of that part, allowing Spielberg to focus solely on performance and direction. They are three-for-three.
I first came in contact with “West Side Story” going into my sophomore year of high school. For our marching band show, we did a selection of pieces from Leonard Bernstein, and two of them (“Somewhere” and “Mambo”) were from “West Side Story.” That was when I first watched the 1961 Oscar-winner, and I really haven’t seen it since. There’s certainly a conversation to be had about whether to watch an earlier version before a new version comes out; I’m kind of glad that I didn’t in this case, because it allowed me to appreciate the music and narrative as a new thing rather than a retread. Bernstein and Sondheim is timeless, though; would the narrative hold up?
There are a lot of things the 1961 film has been criticized for in terms of representation and racial issues that almost come part and parcel with the show’s origins, and fairly so. Spielberg and Kushner attack a lot of these head-on in the casting, and how the story is added to here. Rather than just a collection of numbers, going from one iconic song to another, we do feel like a story is being told. More importantly, we feel like we’re seeing people on screen. The Jets aren’t just an extension of Beatnik culture of the 1950s; they’re the by-product of a society where the suburbs are closing in around the cities, and they’re parents just haven’t been able to succeed. Meanwhile, the Sharks are part of a generation coming to the United States in pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The “American Dream” is within reach and they are coming to succeed. Them being given those opportunities is a threat to the Jets, and it forces the Sharks to protect what they’ve earned. The racial resentments are palpable; this is as true a representation of what “economic anxiety” means as a dog whistle as we’ve seen in cinema. As much as it is about this story, “West Side Story” is also a look at the inequalities and prejudices that run throughout American, that were true in 1957 (when the show debuted), 1961 (when the movie premiered) and now.
Characters are everything in a musical. If we aren’t on board with the actors as performers, the result will leave you dead in the water. At the center of this story is Tony (played by Ansel Elgort) and Maria (played by Rachel Zegler). Here, Tony is a former Jet who’s just out of prison; he’s trying to lay low (when we first see him, he’s being visited by Riff (Mike Faist), his best friend, and leader of the Jets), working in the drug store run by Valentina (Rita Moreno), a Puerto Rican immigrant who married a white man, and now is a key part of the community. Maria is still the younger sister of Bernardo (David Alvarez), the leader of the Sharks, and lives with him and Anita (Ariana DeBose) in an apartment. The second Tony and Maria lock eyes at a dance, everything is destined towards tragedy.
The pandemic threw everything off. I’ve been following Zegler on social media so long it doesn’t feel as though we’re just now watching her first screen appearance. As Maria, she is as radiant and alive as anyone ever has been in a musical film; her performances of “Tonight” and “I Feel Pretty” are sensational. Everything about her performance here runs circles around Natalie Wood in the original, and she had me in tears often. I hope filmmakers continue to challenge her in the roles she’s given, because she’s more than just a pretty face. As the other half of the couple, Elgort is a tougher discussion, and not just for the alleged behavior he’s done towards underaged girls in real life. When he starts out, his Tony is really stiffly performed. As we see him in the musical numbers, though, he loosens up, and we’re on board with him as the lead character. “Maria” is more muted than it should be, but “Cool” is tremendous; this jazzy number has meaning when it’s performed here, and Spielberg, choreographer Justin Peck, and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (whose color pallet feels like a call back to the days of 1950s Technicolor) do a dynamic job of staging and shooting the sequence. In a film filled with brilliant musical sequences, this one might have been my favorite.
The supporting cast has some of the film’s brightest highlights, though. In the role of Anita, DeBose is electric in every way as a performer, whether she’s being supportive of Maria when things turn bad, dancing and singing during numbers like “Mambo” and “America,” or dreaming of the life she could have in America. It’s a rich role, as Rita Moreno knows; she won the Oscar for it in the 1961 film. Here, Moreno’s character is the soul of the film, and her rendition of “Somewhere” is like a prayer for a world that, for the younger generation, doesn’t exist right now; she may very well be nominated for another Oscar for this story. As Bernardo, Alvarez is given a fairly shallow character, unfortunately, but he plays him with fire and energy that makes his showdowns with the Riff tense. As Riff, though, Faist is fantastic, getting to the soul of a bigot, but not letting him off the hook for his bigotry. Ultimately, his ending is the only way his story could end. We just wish it would have been better for Tony and Maria.
“West Side Story” is one of two re-adaptations Spielberg has done over the past 20 years of stories that impacted him as a child. (The other one was 2005’s “War of the Worlds.”) To just dismiss what Spielberg is doing as just “remaking classics” is to not fully grasp the filmmaker Spielberg has become in the past 20 years. In both “War of the Worlds” and “West Side Story,” he’s tackling movies that meant something to him, and bringing his own ideas of what these stories could reflect of the world we live in now. In a way, he’s showing us what great re-interpretations of classics can be; the text is the same, but the context is ever fluid, and alive to the moment. In a way, Tony and Maria represent Spielberg’s dreams of how this story will play to modern audiences; the ending is what happens if such ideas are rejected, and people can’t let go of the past, and move forward. “West Side Story” wants us to move beyond what we think we’re supposed to feel, and free our hearts to a better future.
