FILM REVIEW: “West Side Story”
I think I’m going to make a pig of myself in attempting to review Steven Spielberg’s new version of the musical “West Side Story”. This review will be a mess in a way in which the film is not. In it, I will talk about the musical itself, my feelings toward its male lead actor, and finally, the film itself.
In 1957, New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein wrote the music (and a young Stephen Sondheim the lyrics) for “West Side Story”, a musical that was as revolutionary for its time as Lin Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” would be years later. It was an unprecedented and eclectic fuse of many different musical styles: grand opera, jazz, salsa, and even early rock and roll. It won two Tony Awards, and ran for a very long time, not only on Broadway, but on the West End of London. In 1961, it was turned into a film that proved to be an Academy Award winner ten times over and was the year’s Best Picture winner. Now, it has been made again, this time by the brilliant Steven Spielberg.
In this paragraph, I will my feelings toward Ansel Elgort, the star of this new version, who, since he occupies a substantial amount of screen time in the film, and since he is front-and-center of just about all of its current marketing material, merits a paragraph. He fits the description of a real masher. He is the subject of a great many very-well-publicized sexual assault allegations, including one involving a (then) seventeen-year-old youngster. The publicity of his allegations interfered substantially with my analysis of his performance in the film (and, yes, in light of the allegations, I tried to get the RoadHouse theater to donate some of the proceeds to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault non-profit, but was unsuccessful), and my knowledge of the allegations was such that his on-screen appearance gave me the kind of up-and-down spine chills I’d normally feel in an old Vincent Price movie. As for the character he plays, I would like it to go to someone else. I wouldn’t mind seeing Carlos PenaVega, who voices Bobby in the cartoon “The Casagrandes” in the place of Mr. Elgort. Mr. PenaVega not only is a Latino himself (even if he sometimes looks white in his own photographs) but also, as evidenced via his portrayal of Bobby, a skillful and expert vocalist, his participation in the materially-run-of-the-mill boy band Big Time Rush notwithstanding.
Now that I’ve got my talk about Mr. Elgort out of the way, finally, let’s talk about the film itself. I’ve used the descriptions of my old MGM/UA and CBS/Fox VHS tapes of the original 1961 film as references for describing the film, because this film, the original, and the musical on which both films are based use the same basic storyline, which is an update of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” set in one of the slums of New York, circa 1957. It is centered on Maria, played by the talented Rachel Zegler, who comes face-to-face with the vicious rivalry of two street gangs — the Anglo-Saxon Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks — as she encounters her first taste of love. She greets that when she falls in love with the leader of the Jets, Tony (played by you-know-who). This incites an enormous conflict between her Puerto Rican roots and her Italian American boyfriend’s posse, and sets her newfound romance on a collision course for tragedy.
The film, with Ansel off my mind, is terrific. Steven Spielberg’s directorial skills are magical as ever, the film faithfully recreates the New York of my late father’s relative youth (he was 23 when the musical started its Broadway run and 27 when the 1961 version debuted at the Rivoli), the choreography is spectacular and the music is very rich in its orchestration. The performances (of everyone else) are spectacular. Ms. Zegler is a star in the making. She brings an enormous vitality to her part of Maria, and we are convinced (part of the way through) by her heartbreak at the end. I was most touched by the performance of Rita Moreno as the young grandmother. Moreno played Anita in the 1961 version (where she was dubbed) and serves as the executive producer of this 2021 version. It was moving to see her go from (visually) singing about the perils of “America” when she was 29 going on 30 to singing an especially melancholic version of “Somewhere” at 90.
This review, as you can plainly see, was a huge mess. The movie itself is not, and thank God for that.
FILM NOTE: The song “America”, as performed in this film, contains the lyric “Life is all right in America/If you’re all white in America”. That is not a contemporary rewrite. Those lyrics were also heard in the 1961 film and in the original musical, and the performers here have sung the lyrics as written.
IN CONCLUSION
Great when you don’t think of Ansel
★★★½
“WEST SIDE STORY”
Directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Mr. Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger and Kevin McCollum, screenplay by Tony Kushner from the stage play conceived, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and produced by Robert E. Griffith and Harold S. Prince with book by Arthur Laurentis; music by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, photographed by Janusz Kaminski; film edited by Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar, an Amblin Entertainment-TSG release through 20th Century Studios at the RoadHouse and outlying theaters. This picture has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association.
THE CAST
Tony…………………..Ansel Elgort
Maria………………..Rachel Zegler
Anita……………….Ariana DeBose
Bernardo……………David Alvarez
Valentina……………..Rita Moreno
Riff……………………..Mike Waist
