West Side Story (2021) Review
So here’s the thing: I came late to musicals. I didn’t grow up with a family that was particularly invested in the theater, I never took a Drama class in school, and I freely admit to hopping on the bandwagon a little after Hamilton came out. My street cred with musicals is as low as gangster’s who never learned to pirouette.
Which is a long way of saying I’ve never seen a version of West Side Story before the Spielberg version that came out last Friday. I knew that it was a take on Romeo and Juliet, and I’ve heard the Jets vs. Shark dance battle jokes, but I have no attachment to earlier versions of the play, so I went in basically clean. I’ve done a little reading on some of the changes Spielberg et al. made to the story since watching the film Friday, and I’ll mention those where it seems relevant, but otherwise, here’s a newcomer’s take on the newest version of a sixty-something year old musical.
On the bright side, it’s very easy to pick up the story: two gangs don’t like each other. Two people loosely affiliated with those gangs fall in love. Violence occurs. Various instances of tragedies befall the assorted players. Dramatic turns… turn.
Because this is so similar to Romeo and Juliet, I won’t bother listing out those similarities, though I will remark on a few changes that I quite appreciated. First, setting the conflict between two poor groups who, as apparently only this version of the film suggests, are essentially being pitted against one another while being bullied by economic powers they have no control over is a great modernization of the story. It gives an extra tinge of reality and tragedy when a story full of conflict is basically invisible to the people making the characters’ lives hell. It gives the audience extra reason to care knowing that the rest of the story’s world simply doesn’t. There’s also no Friar Laurence (or Doc) in this version, but the replacement, Valentina, is a great take on a character trying to bridge two worlds. And also, and this is a small moment, the star-crossed lovers actually have a disagreement about their loyalty to their sides of the conflict and who’s right and wrong. While neither has the whole story, both raise legitimately good points that I would have liked to hear out further. But hey. There’s a lot of singing to get to.
For his first time directing a musical, I think Spielberg did quite a good job. The musical numbers look as big and energetic as you would hope for a Hollywood musical. Costumes are gorgeous, action scenes (despite the ballet) generally feel exciting and well-choreographed. There are a lot of camera choices that make the movie feel older than it is. I’m not talking set dressing and nickel candy here, I’m talking about lingering medium-close up shots from a low angle on a stairway, or really soft lighting with gentle lens flares when Tony and Maria are dancing that just aren’t really done in big-budget movies any more. They’re nice, and they offer a bit of nostalgia that the rest of the film FIRMLY warns us against. The world of 1950’s New York is not to be romanticized, but the kinds of films that came out of that era still have a shine to them that the movie recaptures well. I will say that those choices don’t leave us with an immediately iconic modern musical moment: nothing like the planetarium scene in La La Land or the Benny and Nina’s fire escape dance in In the Heights. That’s a little disappointing, though there’s something to be said for a big musical that is so technically proficient that it doesn’t really bother with that kind of flash. Honestly, I’ve got mixed feelings. It works, but it could have worked just a little better.
As previously mentioned, I’m something of a musical poser, and I can’t always tell the difference between really good singers and Hollywood actors who are doing okay but wouldn’t ever cut it on a Broadway stage. That said, I feel like every singer and dancer on the screen except maybe Ansel Elgort was putting in great work. And Mike Faist (Riff) and Ariana Debose (Anita) owned every second of their screen time. Also, kudos for trans-representation in a film written and set in the 1950’s with a character who’s interesting and written with a reasonable conflict.
Much like the source material, I don’t honestly think West Side Story is about whether or not you like the characters or if you can come up with an excuse for the rashness of their decisions (you can’t). All in all, it’s a story about young people making mistakes that they should have had a chance to learn from and the kinds of situations where second chances just aren’t an option. I think this film does a strong job of that until basically the last scene, which just didn’t stick the landing for me. And while the film doesn’t reach dizzying heights of silver screen magic, it’s very effective at what it does.
4 stars out of 5, and now in theaters.