It takes a special kind of nerve, or unmitigated gall, to try and put a new spin on a much-beloved film classic of any kind, especially when it's the Broadway musical WEST SIDE STORY that, in its original 1961 cinematic incarnation, won a record-setting ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture But of course that's the kind of nerve, or more specifically that of a riverboat gambler, that the ultra-legendary Steven Spielberg had when he decided to rework, or more accurately re-imagine, both the musical and the film version in 2021. And in every sense of the word, while it was never his intention to top what was done on Broadway in 1957 or for the big screen in 1961, he has nevertheless made a WEST SIDE STORY with a particular vision and a particular poignancy that perhaps only he, out of all the directors alive today, could possibly muster.
With the screenplay adaptation by Tony Kushner taking it back to the original Arthur Laurents book (and with a fair amount of un-subtitled Spanish dialogue to boot), this WEST SIDE STORY maintains the "Romeo And Juliet"-inspired outline, and the setting in the New York City of 1957. Here, however, the famed and fierce rivalry between the Jets (all Anglos) and the Sharks (all Puerto Ricans) is set against the factual demolition of their part of Manhattan, namely Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill, to build the Lincoln Center. Tony (Ansel Elgort), a former member of the Jets, now works at the drugstore operated by a wise Puerto Rican woman named Valentina (Rita Moreno, who won her Academy Award for portraying Anita in the 1961 original), after having served a year in jail for nearly beating an Egyptian Kings gang member to death. When his old friend Riff (Mike Faist) shows up, feeling him out for a possible rumble with the Sharks, he is unsettled by his friend's newfound xenophobia towards Puerto Ricans. Elgort cannot have any overt contact with his old gang, lest he break his parole; but when Faist invites him to a dance at the nearby school gym where the Sharks are also going to be, he reluctantly goes along, all the time wary of what this might mean for him.
In the meantime, Bernardo (David Alvarez), the leader of the sharks and an up-and-coming boxer, is taking his girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose), his younger sister Maria (Rachel Zegler), and Chino (Josh Andres Rivera), the man Alvarez intends to be Zegler's suitor, to that same dance. The intention is to try and bring the two sides together in a dance-off without any violence, but it almost does come to that, until DuBose motions to the bandleader to break into the famously volcanic Mambo. But unbeknownst to everybody else, Elgort, who has been standing on the periphery of the dance floor, has suddenly caught the eye of Zegler, and vice-versa. The two of them sneak out behind the bleachers, and the poignant "Romeo And Juliet" tryst between the two begins. In the inexplicable way that love has been known to operate throughout eternity, Elgort and Zegler know and acknowledge how ethnically different they both are, and yet they find common cause. The sad tragedy, of course, is that neither the Sharks nor the Jets seem to "get' what Elgort and Zegler see in the other.
There are a number of reasons why Spielberg ventured into the musical genre for the first, and maybe only, time in his career by re-imagining WEST SIDE STORY. One is that he identified with the Latinx community (in this case New York's Puerto Rican community) out of experience of his having felt "Otherized" in his youth because he was a Jewish kid growing up in predominately WASP neighborhoods. Another one, and on a more purely emotional level, is that he wanted to explore how two people from two totally different backgrounds, neither of whom are quite sure how they're supposed to fit in, manage to fall in love. All of this, as was the case on the Broadway stage in 1957 and the big screen in 1961, is set to the great music of Leonard Bernstein, the brilliant lyricism of Stephen Sondheim, and Justin Peck's re-imagining of Jerome Robbins' original choreography.
A lot of attention has rightly been paid to the contributions of Faist, Alvarez, and DeBose (the latter stepping into Moreno's original role); but as this is also at its heart a romantic tragedy, the contributions of the two leads must also be taken into account. Elgort has come in for a lot of fairly vicious attacks for his portrayal of Tony, but I feel they are grossly unjust, because his Tony (unlike that of Richard Beymer in the 1961 film) has a past that he isn't exactly proud of, and he is trying to make a better future for himself with Moreno's support. Elgort conveys that situation of his in exceptionally honest fashion in the scene at the Cloisters with Zegler, where he tries to reassure her that he can somehow stop the impending rumble between the Jets and the Sharks from taking place. It also makes it easier for Zegler to understand that the chain of violence that leads to this story's catastrophic ending was not Elgort's doing, but the end result of the blind hatred that both the Jets and the Sharks had had towards one another long before she herself even came to New York from Puerto Rico.
And when it comes to Zegler--well, she has the Herculean task of going from having been a YouTube sensation to being in her first-ever movie here; stepping into a role made famous on Broadway by Carol Lawrence in 1957, and on the big screen by Natalie Wood in 1961; and doing so under the direction of Hollywood's greatest living filmmaker. In what has to rank among the biggest surprises in all of Hollywood history, she absolutely nails the role of Maria, both in her singing (which is absolutely gorgeous) and her acting, which is oftentimes painfully honest in a way that I can't recall ever seeing in any first-time performance. It is a performance for the ages, and not just for 2021-22.
Despite what the so-called "anti-Woke Culture" critics on the Far Right might want everybody to believe about this film, Spielberg's take on WEST SIDE STORY is yet one more masterpiece from this great filmmaker from start to finish. From making the musical and dance sequences explode with color to the poignant romantic drama between Elgort and Zegler, this is more than worthy of a '10' rating.
With the screenplay adaptation by Tony Kushner taking it back to the original Arthur Laurents book (and with a fair amount of un-subtitled Spanish dialogue to boot), this WEST SIDE STORY maintains the "Romeo And Juliet"-inspired outline, and the setting in the New York City of 1957. Here, however, the famed and fierce rivalry between the Jets (all Anglos) and the Sharks (all Puerto Ricans) is set against the factual demolition of their part of Manhattan, namely Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill, to build the Lincoln Center. Tony (Ansel Elgort), a former member of the Jets, now works at the drugstore operated by a wise Puerto Rican woman named Valentina (Rita Moreno, who won her Academy Award for portraying Anita in the 1961 original), after having served a year in jail for nearly beating an Egyptian Kings gang member to death. When his old friend Riff (Mike Faist) shows up, feeling him out for a possible rumble with the Sharks, he is unsettled by his friend's newfound xenophobia towards Puerto Ricans. Elgort cannot have any overt contact with his old gang, lest he break his parole; but when Faist invites him to a dance at the nearby school gym where the Sharks are also going to be, he reluctantly goes along, all the time wary of what this might mean for him.
In the meantime, Bernardo (David Alvarez), the leader of the sharks and an up-and-coming boxer, is taking his girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose), his younger sister Maria (Rachel Zegler), and Chino (Josh Andres Rivera), the man Alvarez intends to be Zegler's suitor, to that same dance. The intention is to try and bring the two sides together in a dance-off without any violence, but it almost does come to that, until DuBose motions to the bandleader to break into the famously volcanic Mambo. But unbeknownst to everybody else, Elgort, who has been standing on the periphery of the dance floor, has suddenly caught the eye of Zegler, and vice-versa. The two of them sneak out behind the bleachers, and the poignant "Romeo And Juliet" tryst between the two begins. In the inexplicable way that love has been known to operate throughout eternity, Elgort and Zegler know and acknowledge how ethnically different they both are, and yet they find common cause. The sad tragedy, of course, is that neither the Sharks nor the Jets seem to "get' what Elgort and Zegler see in the other.
There are a number of reasons why Spielberg ventured into the musical genre for the first, and maybe only, time in his career by re-imagining WEST SIDE STORY. One is that he identified with the Latinx community (in this case New York's Puerto Rican community) out of experience of his having felt "Otherized" in his youth because he was a Jewish kid growing up in predominately WASP neighborhoods. Another one, and on a more purely emotional level, is that he wanted to explore how two people from two totally different backgrounds, neither of whom are quite sure how they're supposed to fit in, manage to fall in love. All of this, as was the case on the Broadway stage in 1957 and the big screen in 1961, is set to the great music of Leonard Bernstein, the brilliant lyricism of Stephen Sondheim, and Justin Peck's re-imagining of Jerome Robbins' original choreography.
A lot of attention has rightly been paid to the contributions of Faist, Alvarez, and DeBose (the latter stepping into Moreno's original role); but as this is also at its heart a romantic tragedy, the contributions of the two leads must also be taken into account. Elgort has come in for a lot of fairly vicious attacks for his portrayal of Tony, but I feel they are grossly unjust, because his Tony (unlike that of Richard Beymer in the 1961 film) has a past that he isn't exactly proud of, and he is trying to make a better future for himself with Moreno's support. Elgort conveys that situation of his in exceptionally honest fashion in the scene at the Cloisters with Zegler, where he tries to reassure her that he can somehow stop the impending rumble between the Jets and the Sharks from taking place. It also makes it easier for Zegler to understand that the chain of violence that leads to this story's catastrophic ending was not Elgort's doing, but the end result of the blind hatred that both the Jets and the Sharks had had towards one another long before she herself even came to New York from Puerto Rico.
And when it comes to Zegler--well, she has the Herculean task of going from having been a YouTube sensation to being in her first-ever movie here; stepping into a role made famous on Broadway by Carol Lawrence in 1957, and on the big screen by Natalie Wood in 1961; and doing so under the direction of Hollywood's greatest living filmmaker. In what has to rank among the biggest surprises in all of Hollywood history, she absolutely nails the role of Maria, both in her singing (which is absolutely gorgeous) and her acting, which is oftentimes painfully honest in a way that I can't recall ever seeing in any first-time performance. It is a performance for the ages, and not just for 2021-22.
Despite what the so-called "anti-Woke Culture" critics on the Far Right might want everybody to believe about this film, Spielberg's take on WEST SIDE STORY is yet one more masterpiece from this great filmmaker from start to finish. From making the musical and dance sequences explode with color to the poignant romantic drama between Elgort and Zegler, this is more than worthy of a '10' rating.