I watched the original West Side Story for the first time in 20 years a couple months ago and the one word to describe it is ‘undeniable’. That’s a movie you watch and immediately know it won all the Oscars. It’s a brawny display of major studio filmmaking. Not everything about it has aged well over the last 60 years, but it remains one of the most untouchable movies ever made. Hearing that they were going to remake it, I was torn. There’s a lot about the original that could be corrected: namely the complexion of the casting. However, it was coming out the same year as In the Heights, which in a lot of ways is the modern reenvisioning of West Side Story. Stephen Spielberg was directing it, which brings its own baggage, good and bad. He’s arguably the greatest American filmmaker ever. If anyone is capable of withstanding the pressure of this project, it’s him. Yet, he’s never made a musical before. And is a 70-something white director really the best person to tell this story in 2021? Even the casting of this gave me whiplash. Rachel Zegler is easy to root for. Ansel Elgort has become problematic. Everything about this movie gave me pause. I was fully prepared to respond to this with a complete “meh”.
Much to my surprise, this new West Side Story is a complete success. The kind of success that feels obvious in hindsight.
It’s still the same story: Romeo and Juliet in 1950s Manhattan. There are rival street gangs: the Jets – young white men seeing everything about their community going away and blaming it on assorted minorities rather than the city officials gentrifying them out – and the Sharks – a gang of Puerto Rican immigrants trying to make it in this new city where they don’t always fit. The reformed former leader of the Jets, Tony (Ansel Elgort), falls in love with Maria (Rachel Zegler), the sister of the current leader of the Sharks. This escalates a turf war between the gangs until there’s a big brawl that Tony tries to stay out of and Maria wants to stop. The movie can’t fix some of the core problems with the story, like how quickly Tony and Maria fall madly in love. It does add in some new wrinkles that weren’t there before. Like, Rita Moreno is back in a different role as a Puerto Rican shop owner who is helping out Tony and serves as the moral authority of the block. The gentrification angle is nice too, with the Lincoln Center and high-rise apartments set to displace everyone in the block. It adds to the meaningless of the fighting. It handles the racial issues nicely too. The Jets are the clear instigators, but it’s a bunch of dumb men on both sides making things worse. In other words, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner do the one thing this remake needed: they made enough changes to justify the need for it.
That’s the fun of this remake. It’s reverent of the original without being precious about it. Spielberg clearly just wanted to make a big 1960s musical. The way the whole thing is shot is like you asked someone to make a musical in 1960 but with 2020 technology. Like the original movie, even though most of this movie was shot on real locations, every scene looks like it was shot on an impressively large sound stage. It’s like I’m watching a modern fable or fairy tale. I think we all take it for granted how reflexively Spielberg makes a competent movie. He knows what he’s doing and who to hire. I doubt any of the choreography was him, but he sure found the right people for it. That goes for the whole crew of this.
Similar to the original movie, even though the movie has an overwhelming number of men, the women really rocked this movie. This is Rachel Zegler’s first screen appearance and it’s a hell of a debut. Maria is an imposing role and she nailed it. Great voice. Great performance. At only 18 when she filmed this, she’s much younger than all her cast members yet she holds her own with all of them*. Arianna DeBose could win an Oscar for the same role that won Rita Morena an Oscar 60 years ago as Anita, the girlfriend of Maria’s brother. She has a couple gutting dramatic scenes and she’s got “America”: one of the great showcase songs. Rita Moreno in her new role is so vital that you wonder how the first movie worked without that character. It’s probably not enough screen times for Oscar consideration, but I wouldn’t rule it completely out. The men aren’t bad in this by any means though. Ansel Elgort is a perfectly serviceable Tony. David Alvarez as Bernardo, the head of the Sharks, is a little broadly drawn but he plays the character well. Riff, leader of the Jets, is almost a caricature, but Mike Faist’s performance dials it back just enough to work. Spielberg didn’t rely on established stars for this and it turns out he really didn’t need them. And in a couple years, there may be a few more stars in it than we realized.
*And on a personal note, Rachel Zegler seems just delightful. She’s been a good Twitter follow for a while and it’s nice to see just how excited she is by the beginning of her career. It’s hard not to root for her.
The movie mostly does right by the music. I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of all the West Side Story songs. A lot of them have that stagy rhythm where it sounds like they are struggling to make the words fit the melody. There are some bangers though. “America” is a showstopper. “Tonight” gets me going. “I Feel Pretty” is a lovely little song. They gave “Somewhere” to Rita Moreno which works really well. My favorite sequence in the movie might actually be “Gee, Officer Krupke” which had some really clever staging.
I really have to hand it to Steven Spielberg and company for making a bad idea look good. There’s no reason this West Side Story remake should’ve worked. The original is an untouchable classic. The only way a remake could go is down. Perhaps this version isn’t quite as good as the original, but it’s damn close. Closer than it has any right to be.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment