Mark Reviews Movies: WEST SIDE STORY (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 9, 2021

This new cinematic version of West Side Story, the musical that has remained consistently well-known and popular since its first production in 1957, helps to reveal a few constants of the material. The central romance isn't nearly as engaging and effective as the story surrounding it, which deals with issues of racism, xenophobia, class, and the promise of the United States in countering those problems, as well as its regular failures. The love story depends on a few songs, which are great, and the inherent charm of the main actors to have much impact (The 1961 movie adaptation had the songs, at least).

There are others, obviously. The notion of street gangs dancing ballet while asserting their toughness and during fights undermines the struggle and violence at the heart of this story. Some of the songs feel out of place in terms of the tone and the thrust of the plot, especially as it moves towards its tragic end. That tragic end, taken—like the rest of the tale—from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, pulls its final punch to offer a glimmer of hope, which may or may not be earned, depending on how much one is affected by the cynicism that pervades much of the plot after the gangs' fatal rumble.

With all of that out of the way, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have made what might be one of the definitive versions of this material in general. They have most assuredly made the definitive adaptation of West Side Story for the screen, with which any future version will have to contend.

It's a marvel at times. Watching Spielberg incorporate song and dance into a story that remains legitimately gritty and dark and filled with impending doom is quite an accomplishment in its own right. Meanwhile, Kushner, working from the musical's book by Arthur Laurents, alters and expands the back stories of some characters in such a way that things seem more redemptive and optimistic. That only makes the inevitable downfall seem all the more tragic. Even the main romance—thanks, yes, to those fantastic songs and a pair of charming leads—feels more vivid, which isn't saying much, of course—although it does say enough.

Spielberg was clearly influenced by directors Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's 1961 version, which is clear from this adaptation's opening sequence of the rubble of demolition, marking the construction of Lincoln Center. Cityscape shots give us a sense of moving from the 1950s glitz of New York City to this place, where groups of people who couldn't move up the economic ladder are now trapped on the verge of gentrification. On the soundtrack, some eerie whistles and a rise of percussion bring us to the conflict between the Jets, a gang of white hooligans trying to retain some sense of belonging, and the Sharks, a gang of immigrants from Puerto Rico who have had enough of the Jets and their prejudice.

The story unfolds as anyone who recalls Shakespeare or the original musical already knows. The Jets and the Sharks set up a winner-take-all fight. In between scenes that connect the socioeconomic struggles of the two groups (without either really realizing the deeper-than-skin issues that unite them), a sweet and sudden romance develops between María (newcomer Rachel Zegler, who announces herself as a star here), a young Puerto Rican woman, and Tony (a fine-enough Ansel Elgort, who nails the range of his songs), a former member of the Jets who knows and learns more about the errors of his old ways.

A couple of important changes include that Tony is on parole in this version, having gone to prison for almost killing a rival gang member in a fight, and that María is far more assertive about her own life, no longer dragged into an impending marriage by her older brother Bernardo (David Alvarez), the leader of the Sharks. The romance itself, which goes from first-sight infatuation to run-away-together love in a matter of hours, is still juvenile idealism, but the stronger sense of these characters gives those key songs, with music composed by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (whose recent death certainly forces one to consider his craftsmanship anew here), a better sense of, well, idealistic romance. For his part, Spielberg has fun with "Tonight," the musical's balcony scene, by having Tony fling himself around and over the fire escape keeping him from his true love.

There is a lot of joyous inspiration in other musical numbers, from the prologue, in which the Jets punctuate their casual balletic movements with actual gangster attitude (Spielberg and choreographer Justin Peck smartly know the difference between a fight represented by dance and a fight that happens to have movements of dance within it), to a clever contextual re-imagining of "Cool," which has Tony trying to save his best friend Riff (Mike Faist) from a mistake he's bound to make. Faist's performance is a revelation, by the way, in the way his gaze evades anyone and everyone until he, beaten-up and beaten-down wounded soul whom he is, can take control of a situation. His final scene, stubbornly and wrongly but graciously offering forgiveness, is heart-breaking.

Another great performance comes from Ariana DeBosse as Bernardo's girlfriend Anita, who obviously dazzles in the show's best number "America"—a debate between optimism of country's promise and the cruelty of its reality, given boisterous music and ironic lyrics—and genuinely devastates as the character's American Dream becomes a fatalistic nightmare. That role, of course, was played in the 1961 version by Rita Moreno, who here plays Valentina, the owner of a local drugstore named after her late husband, whose relationship serves as a possible mirror of what María and Tony's could be (The character gets a good line that jokes about the immediate zeal of the romance, so Kushner knows it's kind of silly). She gets to sing "Somewhere," the ode to last-chance hope that seems to be fading as the song and its accompanying montage of recent and soon-to-be tragedy unfurl.

It's a shock that this is Spielberg's first musical, considering how adeptly he navigates the tricky balance between the fantasy of song-and-dance and the harsh realities that exist between the lines of music. West Side Story pulls off that difficult trick with seemingly effortless skill.

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