West Side Story
Rating: 
Is it possible? You bet it is. Something’s coming, something good. Happily, the late Stephen Sondheim’s masterly lyrics from West Side Story can be applied to Steven Spielberg’s new movie version, which arrives in cinemas next week.
Despite the apprehension of so many who consider the original 1961 film to be a sacred cinematic treasure – one that should never be re-made or ‘reinterpreted’ – it’s mostly wonderful.
It’s not quite flawless, however. Ansel Elgort is the charming, romantic and swooning Tony. He has all the charm of Marlon brando with the absence of the presence. And his singing voice is good but weak.
Brando was, incidentally, interested in playing Tony in the original, but in his mid-30s was considered too old. Elgort is actually 27.
No such mistake was made with Rachel Zegler – the newcomer plucked out of a New Jersey high school to play the female lead, Maria. She’s charming and sings like an angel, which is more than can be said of the original screen Maria, Natalie Wood, whose songs were dubbed.
Brian Viner reviews West Side Story. Pictured, Ariana DeBose as Anita, foreground left, and David Alvarez as Bernardo
The similarities between these films are both irresistible and inevitable. Thankfully, though, nobody has tampered with the story, which was inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
On Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1957, Tony and Maria fall hopelessly in love despite simmering tensions between the Sharks, the gang of Puerto Rican immigrants led by Maria’s hot-headed brother Bernardo (David Alvarez), and the Jets, the white American gang of which Tony is a member, headed by his best friend Riff (Mike Faist).
Their blossoming romance is stopped when these tensions escalate into violence.
As well as the story and setting, Leonard Bernstein’s immortally wonderful compositions remain the same, with a few amended lyrics here and there.
With the assistance of Tony Kushner (screenwriter), Spielberg has created a film that is both an ode to the original as well as a subtle update of the original.
So Gee, Officer Krupke – the song that was performed in 1961 with a lot of comedic goofing – is here more insolent and harder-edged. Spielberg can do what Robert Wise 60 years ago could not.
All issues that were important back in the day resonate today. But he can make the anger about racism more explicit and the story’s violence – even when interpreted through dance – more shocking. He also has more resources, including New York City. The film opens with the camera flying over an urban landscape. Whole West Side neighborhoods have been destroyed in pursuit of progress. This is the core of the Jets’ rivalry.
As for the film’s showstopper – the great song America – in 1961 it was performed entirely on a Hollywood sound stage. This time it spills, magnificently choreographed, onto the city’s mean streets.
Ansel Elgort, as the swooning romantic lead Tony, and Rachel Zegler – the newcomer plucked out of a New Jersey high school to play the female lead, Maria
I won’t say it knocks the original out of the park. There is nothing that could. But even the purists, for whom a new West Side Story feels faintly blasphemous, will have to agree that it’s thrillingly done. A new character, a Valentina (an elderly woman) who runs the drugstore where Tony lives in the basement should be noted.
YET they shouldn’t mind because she is played – beautifully and entirely defying her almost 90 years – by Rita Moreno, who as Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita won an Academy Award first time round as Best Supporting Actress.
Anita this time is played by Ariana DeBose who’s terrific. It’s possible that Moreno will outshine her, though I believe they are certain to do so when there is a flood of nominations. Spielberg is entitled to it.
He has described his ‘reimagining’ of a masterpiece as the most daunting challenge of his career.
He has triumphantly risen to the occasion if so. And the timing of the release – following a year-long pandemic-enforced postponement – is serendipitous.
First, the picture is six decades old. It arrives two weeks after Stephen Sondheim’s death, making it the ideal epitaph.
- West Side Story is opening in UK cinemas on Friday