The initial few seconds are crucial.
Any faithful presentation of West Side Story must begin with a dark stage or screen, as we hear the call-and-response pair of whistled triplets … followed by a brief pause, and then the vibrant opening bars of Leonard Bernstein’s overture, as the Jets assemble for the first electrifying dance number.
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| This can't end well: Although the school gym is supposed to be neutral territory, the white kids (left) and Puerto Ricans clearly aren't sizing up each other's dance moves ... even though this sequence quickly explodes into one of the film's many amazing production numbers. |
Actually, everybody nails it.
Screenwriter Tony Kushner — who earned Oscar nominations for his two previous collaborations with Spielberg, 2005’s Munich and 2012’s Lincoln — retains the essential late 1950s/early ’60s setting, while adding focus to the “urban renewal” (i.e. slum clearance) that puts additional pressure on the Jets and their rivals, the Puerto Rican Sharks. No wonder they jockey ever more furiously for control of their rapidly shrinking turf.
Indeed, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski opens the film with slow, sweeping pans past huge wrecking balls that hover over the demolished remnants of several city blocks that now look like a war zone: a deliberately grim reminder that neighborhoods of color invariably are targeted for such development.
(In a rather droll touch, Kaminski’s camera also slides past a large sign that heralds the impending creation of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.)
The opening “call to arms” is led by Riff (Mike Faist), who propels the expanding cadre of Jets toward an equally large gathering of the Sharks, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez). The unison dance moves are feral, taunting and gracefully balletic; choreographer Justin Peck, of New York City Ballet, clearly quotes Jerome Robbins’ original dances, albeit with even more intensity.
Peck’s staging of subsequent numbers, as the story proceeds, is audaciously clever. The show-stopping “America,” always a highlight, has been moved from a nighttime rooftop to the San Juan Hill’s daytime streets, where it explodes into a massive neighborhood block party of store merchants and passersby, in addition to our main characters. It’s a breathtaking sequence that gets progressively bold and colorful, the moves ranging from Robbins-esque ballet to Caribbean pachanga.
“I Feel Pretty” is given an ironic twist, as Maria (Rachel Zegler) and the many female members of her late-night cleaning crew cavort amid the mannequins on the ground floor of Gimbels … where all the clothing and accessories are aimed at white patrons. “Cool,” a straight dance piece in the 1961 film, has been transformed into an increasingly angry confrontation between Riff and Tony (Ansel Elgort), as they wrestle for control of a gun while trying to evade the gaping holes on a rotting pier at the edge of the city.
It’s a ferociously tense sequence, Spielberg deliberately playing on our fear that the damn thing’s gonna go off at any moment.
Other things can’t — shouldn’t — be touched. Tony and Maria still have their first close encounter on the fire escape of her tenement building, where they exchange a tentative kiss and croon the rapturous “Tonight.” Aside from being staged in a manner that showcases Elgort’s athletic grace, this scene most vividly cements the story’s origins in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Prior to that, we get a touch of Spielbergian magic during the “dance at the gym” sequence, when Tony and Maria first spot each other from opposite sides of a crowded dance floor, which suddenly turns dreamlike. Pure enchantment.
The story is bare-bones simple. Despite belonging to opposite factions, Tony and Maria fall in love, as the Jets and Sharks prepare for a nasty rumble that’ll decide local turf control. Bernardo’s awareness of this “forbidden” romance — Maria is his younger sister — enrages him even further, and puts additional pressure on the upcoming battle.
Although Tony co-founded the Jets, back in the day, he has returned to the neighborhood a changed man, following a year in prison. He’d rather make peace (and love) than war; this disappoints Riff, who feels that his longtime friend is betraying the cause.
In other words, tension abounds everywhere.
Elgort and Zegler have the showcase roles, and it’s refreshing to enjoy stars with strong acting chops and gorgeous singing voices. (Natalie Wood, it must be remembered, was notoriously dubbed in the 1961 film.) Elgort has a lovely tenor voice, which he puts to ample use in “Maria” and his enchanting duet numbers with Zegler, “Tonight” and “One Hand, One Heart.”
At first blush, Elgort’s Tony seems genuinely reformed: polite, calm and mature. He also blossoms with unexpected love, Elgort’s features becoming positively animated. And yet his gang-banging tendencies are merely submerged, and — when aroused — his bearing turns quietly lethal.
Zegler is radiance personified. Maria is sweet, charming and passionate to a degree that would feel syrupy in lesser hands, but Zegler sells it; she’s the epitome of a young woman exhilarated by her swooning first love. Later, when things go wrong, Maria’s anguish is shattering; her duet on “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” is heartbreaking.
As was the case in the 1961 film, at times both leads are in danger of being blown off the screen by their co-stars. That’s particularly true of Ariana DeBose’s performance as Anita, Bernardo’s lover and Maria’s best friend: the role that brought an Oscar to Rita Moreno back in the day, and could have the same result this time.
DeBose’s work is marvelously subtle. In the first act, Anita is feisty and flirty; she radiates sensuality when around Bernardo, and is quite snarky about his notions regarding their future (albeit with a twinkle in her eye). Her transformation is Act 2 is breathtaking, DeBose channeling grief and fury to a degree that’s palpable.
Alvarez makes Bernardo a tightly wound coil of seething rage: a guy no longer willing to tolerate the unspoken — and often spoken — assumption that Puerto Ricans are lower forms of life. When Bernardo’s fury finally erupts, Alvarez is flat-out scary.
Faist, in turn, makes Riff a study in contradictions. Graced with a snake’s sinister slyness, and welded to his role as the Jet’s de facto leader, he’s also a shrewd judge of character, with a level of perceptive analysis that suggests he could enjoy a successful life if he went straight. But he’s resigned to his current role, and Faist deftly makes him a tragic figure.
The biggest narrative shift concerns the drugstore/soda shop where the Jets hang out, and where Tony has been given a job. The place traditionally is run by an elderly gent dubbed Doc, for whom it’s named; the role has been gender-shifted here and crafted for Moreno, returning to the film she made 60 years ago (!).
She plays Valentina, Doc’s widow, which grants a strong maternal element to her protective relationship with Tony. Moreno also is given a song, “Somewhere” — traditionally sung by other cast members — which Valentina delivers with touching pathos, against a montage of dire developing events. (Wouldn’t it be totally cool if Moreno also scored an Oscar nod?)
Corey Stoll does his best to maintain neighborhood peace as Lt. Schrank, who genuinely grieves over the way these young men are wasting their lives. In contrast, Brian d’Arcy James’s Officer Krupke is a quasi-comic jerk who views them with disdain, and definitely deserves the hilarious verbal drubbing he gets in the patter song “Gee, Officer Krupke” (also staged quite inventively by Peck).
Iris Menas radiates torment and frustration as Anybody’s, a Jets wannabe disdained by the gang members for her sexual ambiguity (a much more telling role, and performance, than was the case in 1961). Josh Andrés Rivera is suitably bookish as Chino, whom Bernardo tries to shelter from the gang life, and who also is sweet on Maria.
Although all of the songs are marvelous — clever and forever memorable — “Gee, Officer Krupke” and “America” have the sharpest lyrics and most inventive rhymes: a reminder of the recently departed Stephen Sondheim’s genius. (Amazingly, he began his career with West Side Story: certainly one of the most auspicious debuts in Broadway history.)
Considerable chutzpah was required to even conceive of a fresh look at West Side Story; it’s a third rail of remakes, akin to tampering with The Wizard of Oz or Citizen Kane. But Spielberg embraced the challenge and persevered, as he has done so many times in the past. This opulent musical is as vibrant, colorful, intense and dramatically powerful as it was six decades ago.
Quite cool!
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