WEST SIDE STORY

Stars: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Rita Moreno, Corey Stoll, Brian d’Arcy James, Josh Andrés Rivera, Iris Menas.
Writer: Tony Kushner
Music: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim.
Director: Steven Spielberg

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Steven Spielberg has cited on countless occasions the role that the 1961 Oscar-winning classic West Side Story has had on his life. It was the film, along with Lawrence of Arabia, that fuelled his passion for cinema. It imprinted upon his young mind the impact that colour and movement and rhythm and composition can have upon an audience.

So how does the most accomplished, commercially successful filmmaker of all time interpret the story that was the very inspirational source that led him to legendary status?

Or, more precisely - can the filmmaker, now 75 years of age, and having engaged the hearts and minds of two generations of filmgoers, re-capture the sense of film magic that shaped his impressionable teenage mind? Is the kind of awe-inspiring, heart-tugging mastery that defined his early work but that has been absent in his later, more studious films, still a well that he can tap?

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is a more grounded and contemporary but no less wondrously romantic reworking of the Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise film; a dazzling, deeply respectful rendition of the Stephen Sondheim/Arthur Laurents/Leonard Bernstein story and songbook; and, a feat of widescreen cinematic splendour unmatched since the golden era of Hollywood.

Updated with an eye towards authentic representation by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, Spielberg has cast Ansel Elgort (channeling a young Val Kilmer) and the breathtakingly talented Rachel Zegler as Tony and Maria, lovebirds from different neighbourhoods whose passion will ignite the gangland feud between the Jets, led by the self-destructive rebel Riff (a compelling Mike Faist) and the latino gang, The Sharks, under amateur boxer Bernardo (David Alvarez).

For those of us who have pined for a Spielberg-helmed musical since the ‘Jitterbug’ sequence in 1941 (1979) and again after the ‘Anything Goes’ opening of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984), West Side Story proves worth the wait. The director excels in the vibrant dance sequences, none more so than the soaring splash of colour and kinetic energy he conjures for the showstopper, ‘America’. With actress Ariana DeBose at the centre of choreographer Justin Peck’s dance action, the director (along with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and veteran editor Michael Kahn) literally lifts you from your seat, so at one with his camera are his characters and his audience. 

Other highlights are the gasp-inducing final rumble between Riff and Bernardo; the alleyway/fire escape sequence in which Tony and Maria sing their longing for each other; and, original cast member Rita Moreno returning for a major role and commanding every frame of her performance with the same magic she conveyed on screen 60 years ago.

The thematic elements that we recognise as being synonymous with the America of today - ghetto marginalisation, bias in the policing of minorities, the horror of gun-related violence - are so markedly relevant, why should a filmmaker of Spielberg’s stature not tackle a remake of a work many perceive as an untouchable classic? And Kushner’s collaborations with Spielberg have always been in service of immediate social commentary - Munich (2005) weighed in on vengeance as the U.S. retaliation for 9/11 was in full bluster; Lincoln (2012) espoused humanity in politics as the nation’s bi-partisan divide grew wider.  

In 2021, the film is not the groundbreaking artistic gamble it was in 1961; it earns its kudos as a heartfelt homage and overdue contemporisation. Or are those elements the film’s most glorious achievements? Does it throwback to a period so long since departed - that era of giddy, glorious majestic film storytelling and movie camera mastery - that it feels somehow fresh all over again? It is not impossible to imagine a young filmmaker seeing West Side Story at a point in his own development and being impacted by Spielberg’s reworking in much the same way the great director was in his youth.