West Side Story

Steven Spielberg takes a classic and with aplomb re-invents it for our time.

She feels pretty: Rachel Zegler

There’s a reason that Romeo and Juliet has endured for centuries in so many different forms. It is such a universal and powerful tale of true love and prejudice. A musical update was inevitable and Jerome Robbins’ stage show, first produced in 1957, spawned a screen version four years later that was garlanded with more Academy Awards (ten) than any musical in history. So, time for a remake, then? Well, yes, as the themes of intolerance resonate as loudly today as they ever have in the intervening sixty years. And Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s immortal songs were so ahead of their time that a new generation can appreciate them on a whole new level. If it’s possible, the new film is an even more affecting experience as its lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, passed away just three days before its New York premiere, aged 91. And so Sondheim – the Shakespeare of musical theatre – passed on the baton to Steven Spielberg, the cinema’s most successful and skilful storyteller.

Unlike that other maestro of the movies, Ridley Scott (and fellow knight), Spielberg has lost none of his ability to engage and enthral, inventing new cinematic forms along the way (the ‘love at first sight’ sequence being a case in point). If anybody could have reinvented this musical classic for our times, Spielberg was our man.

Unlike the first film, the new one is a period piece, retaining the original’s mid-1950s’ era, the rumble in the rubble accentuated by the vast tract of demolished streets. Thus, attendant wrecking balls stand by ominously, making a mockery of the territorial warfare of the Jets and the Sharks, the rival Caucasian and Puerto Rican gangs of the story. And as one gang member observes that their rivalry is not about skin, but territory, that very terrain is being torn apart around them, adding a resounding knell of irony. But the fire escape jungle remains, posing as an apt replacement for Juliet’s balcony or, in this case, Maria’s scaffold.

Initially, the young, callow Sondheim (then aged 26) was reluctant to join the production, as he found the act of composing music far more rewarding than writing lyrics (and there’s another irony). And so it took a visionary of Sondheim’s pluck that he would dare repeat the refrain of ‘Maria’ repeatedly as Tony tasted the sound of his new love’s name (“Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria... And suddenly that name/Will never be the same").

The lanky, boyish Ansel Elgort is in good voice as Tony, his 6’4” frame providing another contrast to the 5’2” Rachel Zegler as Maria, a difference enhanced rather than ignored in the film. More significantly, he is a white boy daring to dance with a Puerto Rican girl, an incident that lights the dramatic fuse of the entire musical. But it is Zegler, a professional singer, who is the voice of the film, bringing those timeless numbers ‘Tonight’ and ‘I Feel Pretty’ to reverberating life. In an instant, she eclipses the memory of Natalie Wood in the same role, whose singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon anyway. Zegler is the real deal and the Oscar buzz she is generating entirely justified (although she won’t win).

Few directors generate emotion like Spielberg, and with his prowling, inventive camera he racks up the tension, while Bernstein’s terrific score punches home the futility and tragedy of such wanton intolerance. At once familiar yet totally fresh, this West Side Story for our times was worth the wait.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Rita Moreno, Rachel Zegler, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll, Josh Andrés Rivera, Iris Menas. 

Dir Steven Spielberg, Pro Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger and Kevin McCollum, Screenplay Tony Kushner, Ph Janusz Kamiński, Pro Des Adam Stockhausen, Ed Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar, Music Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics Stephen Sondheim, Costumes Paul Tazewell, Choreography Justin Peck, Dialect coaches Thom Jones and Victor Cruz. 

Amblin Entertainment/TSG Entertainment-Walt Disney Studios.
156 mins. USA. 2021. UK and USA Rel: 10 December 2021. Cert. 12A .