What to say about 'West Side Story'? I've had really mixed feelings on Steven Spielberg's remake of the 1961 Oscar winning movie musical, which in turn was based on the 1957 Tony winning stage musical, which in turn was based on Shakespeare's legendary play 'Romeo and Juliet'. In my opinion 1961's West Side Story just may the best movie musical of all time, it has a timeless story, great choreography, wonderful cast, every song lands and many are great. There is no way Spielberg could make something more iconic, and he didn't.
What Spielberg did do is added more context, moved some songs around, fleshed things out via long time collaborator Tony Kushner's screenplay, did things visually you couldn't have done in the 1960's, and tried to make the story better resonate with todays audiences. This was a parietal success.
The story is already a tragedy universal in nature, two people who love each other kept apart by circumstance. 'Isn't it a shame these two good kids couldn't get together', that works any place and time. Spielberg's film takes that universality and manages to make it feel less universal, not so much something that could happen any place and any time, but something whose happing is supper specific to the time and place in which it is set.
This is an angrier, more political film, which does not end on the cautiously hopeful coda of the first movie, but feels like the contemporary document it is, lamenting a promise not fully fulfilled. At times the realism of the sets feels off given the musical numbers being played out on them, and Ansel Elgort is to put it simply no Richard Beymer.
In the films favor is Rachel Zegler, whose just lovely and talented and unlike the equally adorable Natalie Wood didn't need to be dubbed (in fact much of the original cast was dubbed as well). Much of the new material added by Kushner actually works, the character of Tony gets a stronger arc, the absence of parents in the picture plays better, there is more of a sense of menace to the proceedings, especially near the end. Having Rita Moreno return to this property six decades on and casting her as a voice of reason was wonderful. Even converting the character of 'Anybody' from a tom boy type to more of an overt transman works, and much better then I thought it could.
It is the power of the music that carries both films, they do a great job with it here, it was often quite moving. Spielberg dose a fine job mounting the production numbers, and though I prefer the musical staging in the original feature, this is a septuagenarian doing his first musical, and doing a quality job at it.
So my biggest problems with this film have to do with subtext, and may not even register with most viewers. The new West Side Story is still one of the best films I've seen all year, but like 'In The Heights' which came out this summer, doesn't feel like it entirely knows what it wants to be as film musical. ***1/2
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