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DECEMBER 15�22, 2021
‘West Side Story’ is Steven Spielberg’s
most exhilarating movie in years
Justin Chang
Los Angeles Times
A
t the beginning of Ste-
ven Spielberg’s brilliantly
directed “West Side Story,” the
Jets whistle, snap their fi ngers
and pirouette around New York,
a city that looms and sprawls but
is still nowhere big enough to
contain their brash, combative
energy. So far, so familiar. But
anyone who grew up on Robert
Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961
Oscar-winning smash — and
who has memorized every chord
of Leonard Bernstein’s music,
every step of Robbins’ choreog-
raphy and every lyric composed
by (sob) the late, great Stephen
Sondheim — will immediately
spot some diff erences.
Rather than opening with
lofty aerial views of Manhat-
tan, Spielberg’s movie starts off
lower to the ground, snaking its
way through the brick-strewn
Niko Tavernise/20th Century Fox
Ansel Elgort as Tony and Rachel Zegler as Maria star in Steve Spielberg’s
“West Side Story” remake.
rubble of a San Juan Hill tene-
ment that’s been demolished to
make way for Lincoln Center. A
patina of 1950s social realism
has long been one of this musi-
cal’s selling points, and it gets
an extra layer of grit here in the
barbed wire and twisted metal
of Adam Stockhausen’s produc-
tion design, plus the exuberant
athleticism of the cinematogra-
phy. Once the dancing begins,
the camera doesn’t seem to be
recording so much as propelling
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the performers’ movements,
matching and even amplifying
their mix of balletic grace and
street-gang aggression.
And such aggression! Led by
Riff (Mike Faist, spectacular in
his wiry physicality and wise-
guy attitude), the Jets swiftly
desecrate a local mural of the
Puerto Rican fl ag, provoking a
startlingly brutal clash with their
archrivals, the Sharks. The racial
divisions feel especially fi erce,
not just because of the slurs fl y-
ing back and forth but because,
in contrast with the earlier fi lm,
the Sharks are actually played by
Latino actors (none more arrest-
ing than David Alvarez as their
swaggering leader, Bernardo).
I don’t mean to single out this
casting as some sort of accom-
plishment: It’s 2021, for heaven’s
sake. But it’s also, of course, the
‘50s. And the obvious care taken
by Spielberg and his screenwrit-
er, Tony Kushner — here wring-
ing an entirely new script from
Arthur Laurents’ original book —
speaks to the cultural fi restorms
that “West Side Story” seems to
ignite with each new iteration.
As with most updates of
beloved material, the mere fact
of this movie’s existence has
provoked its fair share of indig-
nation. Some of the criticism has
focused on Hollywood’s remake
addiction, but more of it has to
do with the troubling, complicat-
ed legacy of “West Side Story”
itself, whose mashup of broad
archetypes and ethnic stereo-
types has long been a source
of contention. There may be no
greater emblem of the show’s
triumphs and failures than Rita
Moreno’s 1961 performance as
Anita, a role for which she was
forced to wear brown makeup
— a singular degradation for the
lone Puerto Rican member of the
cast — and for which she won a
history-making Academy Award
for supporting actress.
By the end, I was less moved
by Tony and Maria’s tragic love
story, which veers expectedly
between sweetness and creaki-
ness, than I was by Spielberg’s
sheer faith in the transporting
power of movies. He believes
there’s still a place for them, and
for us.
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