West Side Story
What is most surprising about the new West Side Story is how light-footed it is, how it honors its own legacy while also staring us straight in the face with relevance and urgency. Steven Spielberg is working with a level of self-assuredness here that is very welcome, and his choice to reunite with screenwriter Tony Kushner – which might have seemed odd at first glance – has produced an almost completely satisfying movie that forgoes nostalgia for a churning emotional energy. The opening shots of half-knocked down buildings (on the site of what will become Lincoln Center) set up a framework that Kushner’s script explains: New York is changing, and soon the old neighborhood where the Jets and Sharks battle for turf will be a thing of the past. The Jets, who we first see under the command of Riff (excellent Mike Faist) stealing paint to deface a Puerto Rican flag mural, view Puerto Ricans as interlopers while Bernardo (David Alvarez) and the Sharks see every day as an existential struggle for identity in a new country.
Spielberg and Kushner are interested in something that the creators of the Broadway show and 1961 movie knew but couldn’t say directly. West Side Story is about how ambition and identity collide in America, and in this new version the city that Riff and his friends know is building something new on the rubble of the old. Half the buildings in the neighborhood seem to be in the process of being knocked down, to be replaced by a New York that Riff will be priced out of. Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican community is organizing to fight evictions. (The name Robert Moses is seen briefly on one protestor’s sign. There is a sense that in Kushner’s conception Moses is the real villain here.) But neither Riff nor Bernardo can see the struggle in these larger terms, and as we know the story turns on older hatreds. The one character who transcends the gang vs. gang conflict is Valentina (Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing Anita in the 1961 version). We are told Valentina is the widow of Doc, the shopkeeper character in the original show, and Moreno plays Valentina with the toughness required of someone who married into another world. In the movie’s biggest surprise, one of the signature songs is recontextualized into a moment for Valentina in a way that both works emotionally and signals the broader ideas that Spielberg and Kushner have in mind.
West Side Story is of course also a love story, and it is in the story of ex-Jet Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Bernardo’s sister Maria (Rachel Zegler) that this West Side Story falls short. Rachel Zegler is a real find, an appealing newcomer whose voice sounds exactly as Maria’s should sound. That is, the voice of a young girl falling in love. Zegler isn’t just a voice though; her performance is about Maria finding herself in a world that isn’t ready for her yet and she more than pulls it off. Maria’s song “I Feel Pretty” takes on an entirely new shade under Spielberg’s direction, as Maria’s job as a nighttime cleaning lady at Gimbel’s puts her in front of some very white ideas of taste and beauty. If only Spielberg had found a Tony to equal Zegler. Ansel Elgort seems at once both too old and too immature for the role, and when Elgort is face to face with Zegler he acts with what I can only describe as “I didn’t make the lacrosse team” energy. Elgort’s modern poutiness (he never seems like someone capable of violence) fails the movie but doesn’t wreck it, because there are ideas and music and other good performances all around. Zegler’s Maria deserves better, though.
When I saw the 1961 West Side Story on the big screen, I was struck by how director Robert Wise kept the dancers in full frame. That movie honors its characters and their need for self-expression by emphasizing their physicality, and here Spielberg takes a similar approach. The dance where Tony and Maria first meet is shot with great verve, with Janusz Kaminski’s camera weaving though the crowd as two communities battle for space on the floor. “America”, the most ebullient song, starts in an apartment and turns into a full-scale dance blowout in the street led by Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose). DeBose is very good throughout, buying into a promise that other characters are more skeptical of but again never losing her sense of self.
We didn’t strictly “need” another West Side Story, but Steven Spielberg has given us one that both honors the source material and still feels very much of these times. Cities change, neighborhoods come and go, and things seem like they never get any better for those who have less than others. Part of being an American is speaking freely about people different from you. (Though the tone is different, parts of West Side Story reminded me of this scene. ) Spielberg understands all of this, and he and Kushner – who I’d argue has a high degree of authorship here – make it all sing. I want to be in America.