It was inevitable, perhaps, that someone would remake director Robert Wise and choreographer/co-director Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story, especially as our volatile national discourse darkened through the Trump era, and we should probably consider ourselves lucky that it was Steven Spielberg who decided to do so. As much as we’d (or perhaps I should just use “I” here, given that the 1961 film holds a special place in my heart) like to think that a Oscar winner — 10 times over, in fact — could be placed in a metaphorical remake-free Faraday cage, where no digital cinematographer could ever get to it or laser projector display it on poorly-masked auditorium screens, it’s not as if it isn’t a regular occurence. Indeed, when it comes to the stage, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ musical is performed hundreds upon hundreds of times by high school drama clubs and regional theater companies, to say nothing of the Broadway revivals that have happened over the years. The difference, perhaps, comes in the informational and impossible-to-replicate influence of the ’61 film itself, which inherently separates it from the stage-bound productions that it inevitably holds some sway over. The Wise film holds a vice grip on Spielberg’s West Side Story, and as much as it attempts to portray itself as a more contemporary interpretation of the fable, the changes that are made are somewhat of a mixed bag: Some work wonderfully, others lack what some would assume are the basic considerations when you’re trying to, you know, remake West Side Story.
If you’re unfamiliar with Wise’s film, you should probably just go ahead and go watch it, because a number of tributes stacked throughout the film will be lost on you, and Spielberg (alongside his co-writer, Tony Kushner) assumes that you have probably seem some version of the Romeo and Juliet riff in the past 30 years. But, to shortly summarize what should be common knowledge at this point: West Side Story tells the sad tale of two star-crossed lovers, Maria (Rachel Zegler), a Puerto Rican immigrant who lives with her brother Bernardo (David Alverez) and his girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose), and Tony (Ansel Elgort), a Polish ex-con who works stocking shelves at a pharmacy run by the kindly Doc (here gender-and-ethnicitity flipped so that the character can be played by Rita Moreno, who is fantastic). Tony was the co-founder of the Jets, a neighborhood gang comprised of the sons of white immigrants, but left the group after getting sent upstate for nearly killing another kid in a “rumble.” Riff (Mike Faist), Tony’s pal, now has control of the gang, and things are getting pretty bad: the Jets are locked in a gang war with the Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang are led by Bernardo, and tensions are growing between the two groups. But at a dance one night, Tony and Maria meet and fall in love, which causes things between the gangs to go into overdrive, and puts the romance on a collision course with tragedy.
Is it Shakespeare? No, not really, but Sondheim’s book is still as moving as always, and pretty much all of the music hits as it should — as long as you’re in tune, it is incredibly hard to fuck this up. What fills the moments between numbers is less successful. Kushner’s approach to the screenplay is interesting, with an uneven ration between the hits and misses, some of which feel as if they were an intentional response to Roger Ebert’s retrospective piece on Wise’s film, which he selected as an entry in his Great Movies series despite having a number of complaints (you can read the full essay here, which is worth your time if you need some background about the original and the critical response to it). It should go without saying that cultural norms have altered since the heyday of Hays Code Hollywood, and Kushner spares little time in trying all the things that Arthur Laurents thought wasn’t possible back in the day: We’ve got plenty of swearing, more overt violence, racial slurs, and a straight-up attempted rape at one pivotal point. On one hand, this seems to fit well to modern eyes, a doubling-down on realism in the face of the unreality of the musical itself, one in line with Spielberg’s own similar tensions between matters of aesthetic and emotional honesty. On the other hand, that exact contrast doesn’t really work when the songs themselves are mostly unchanged, and the reason I think the Wise film has aged so well is because of that fable-like nature, which embraces unreality fully, even if it was due to the external limitations imposed upon them by the time of its creation.
Perhaps this aesthetic shift would be easier to stomach had it not directly informed the visual and sonic ethoses behind Spielberg’s production. Had the movie been as lively or as colorful as the original, those changes may have well been more interesting, but the director decided to continue the partnership with his longtime cinematographer Janusz Kaminiski. He’s responsible for the desaturated look of such films as Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, War of the Worlds, and Bridge of Spies — dramas and thrillers well-noted for their visual immediacy — and he’s an incredibly poor fit for a tale like this. Frames that should be stacked with color, such as any set in the cloth-draped apartment that Maria shares with her brother and Anita, are rendered dull and flat in Kaminski’s hands, graded to the point of visual blandness (there’s also an astonishing silence to the film outside of the musical sequences — it’s almost as if the score was the sole sacred cow unslaughtered). Perhaps he should have just shot the film in greyscale to be truly period-appropriate: this West Side Story is, after all, a period piece, set in the life-filled neighborhoods behind the slowly-encroaching Lincoln Center, amongst other Robert Moses projects, an acknowledgment of the context around the story’s origins that does little to make it work better beyond providing a way for the audience to feel satisfied with their historical awareness.
Yet despite all of the aesthetic misfires, Spielberg does a lot to pick up the slack. His direction of the musical sequences is fantastic, especially the opening number, which establishes the setting, gangs, and the musical’s central conflict with aplomb. It can’t compare to the choreography of the Wise film, but it offers, perhaps, the clearest vision of what the best version of this film might have looked like, full of music and motion and style while still managing to embrace the ethos behind the musical’s creation. “Dear Officer Krupkie” is also a standout sequence, directed with energy and life reminiscent of the best Kelly/Donan collaborations, with Kaminiski’s colorless instincts put on hold to pristinely capture the wooden holding room of a police station bathed the amber afternoon light. Weirdly, that number in particular also has the effect of making one realize how badly-cast Elgort is as Tony, as pretty much any of the other Sharks could have done a better job in the role than him. He’s essentially doing Val Kilmer’s impression of Marlon Brando in between takes on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, and though he’s got a nice singing voice, it’s hard not to watch the “Krupkie” number and imagine someone like Channing Tatum bringing life and pathos to, you know, the second-most essential part of the story.
Happily, the rest of the cast is well-suited to the roles assigned to them, especially Zegler, DeBose, and Alverez, who would have most likely been fantastic in an otherwise traditional production, but are elevated to near-greatness by a surprising choice made by Spielberg and Kushner. Entire scenes in their home — and amongst the Puerto Ricans when they’re alone — are set in unsubtitled Spanish, an obviously rare choice in Hollywood cinema that also happens to acknowledge the fact that plenty of Latino Americans will be watching the film as well. The pair trust that the audience has some knowledge of the story going into this and, aside from the occasional clarifying line, it is the one factor in this quest for an Authentic Take On West Side Story that actually feels as genuine in its realization as it was intended to be. It creates such a great cultural and stylistic contrast between the two gangs, one that feels at home with the musical’s sensibility. Had these choices — casting Latino leads in the roles that were meant for them, and the fearlessness with crossing the language barrier — been the only true difference amongst the pair, it’d honestly be a pretty easy decision as to which was better. But as it stands, Wise’s film remains undefeated in terms of being the best screen translation of the musical to the screen, with the Beard taking home a distant second.