United States, 2021
Directed by Steven Spielberg
With Rachel Zegler (Maria), Ansel Elgort (Tony), David Alvarez (Bernardo), Ariana DeBose (Anita), Josh Andrés Rivera (Chino), Mike Fest (Riff), Rita Moreno (Valentina), Corey Stoll (Schrank)
A world of ruins: the smooth aerial shot surveys endless rows of half-demolished buildings; then the camera swoops down to sway around a towering wrecking ball, and then lands on the ground, amid the rubble and a construction site’s stuff and machines, including a bulldozer from which jumps out a gang leader and his belle, eagerly awaited by his underlings, rushing from every corner – obviously, the place is where they work. But it seems now work time is over: they all stride through the streets, causing havoc, and being glad to cause havoc – disturbing the traffic, pestering the shopkeepers, scaring folks. They eventually reach a basketball ground where they find out a mural painting of the Porto Rico flag. That gets them incensed, and they rush to daub paint to deface the flag, a move that leads to a rumble with another group of youngsters, all Puerto Ricans, ready to fight for their identity and against the bad white boys.
Whose wall it is, whose block, whose turf: the racist but lucid police officer who separates the brawlers, Schrank, is painfully aware of what is going on. A new group of immigrants is sweeping in, eager to get opportunities to climb up the rungs of the social ladder and to be better off in a neighborhood where big real estate investments alter the landscape. If the young Whites born in the place do not change their ways, do not make efforts, do not get a hold on themselves, they would end up surviving on the fringe, poorer, dumber, and forgotten. The urban space as the essence of the social dislocation, the breeding ground of social frustration causing violence, and the playing field for racial assertiveness: this is how this movie’s New York City looks like, in what is a politically charged and acute vision of an old love story, far remote from its origins in the 14th century Verona, the famous interpretation of an English bard, and to some extent from the previous film version directed in 1961 by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins – the first “West Side Story” was pacing along the fault lines of the American society, but not quite in the same stark and dark terms.
Chilling is that other dramatic, splendid overhead shot capturing the two gangs walking inside a warehouse to face each other for the big rumble supposed to settle their scores, that is, as plainly articulated by Riff, the leader of the white bunch, aka the Jets, to decide who is going to occupy for good the coveted territory. The elongated shadows of the boys moving closer to each other and away from each side of the frame look like jaws of a mouth getting shut, a testimony of a violence considered as the only way to solve issues, a disturbing reminder of the long, bloody history of the building of the nation and its expansion through the world, and a harbinger of the gruesome brutality that would alter the fates of many of the characters. Race and identity are the cause of the violence, and cannot be escaped, stifling many across the board. The lovers who met by chance during a ball would always have to face it, the woman painfully aware of the gap the man would like to overlook, and yet stand ready to overcome it no matter what.
The social discontent of the Jets is matched with the doubts of the Puerto Rican Sharks: like in the 1961 version, the song “America” underlines that the rosy picture the adoptive nation can project cannot be taken at face value. The women, led by Anita, the girlfriend of the Sharks’ leader Bernardo, can praise everything their new home provides but the men remind them of the price tag – even if Bernardo is chased away in a flurry of brightly varicolored fabrics, his point still resonates. But the number’s starting point cuts deeper in the contradictions of the immigrant experience: Anita and Bernardo had previously a tiff, sparked by Bernardo’s opinionated sister, the young Maria, who is falling in love with Tony, the Jets’ co-founder. Maria does not accept Bernardo tells her whom to love and how to behave. As Bernardo keeps expounding on what family, duty, future are supposed to be, the talk gets unwieldy and irks Anita: women are not supposed to be just mothers struggling to feed the kids the males wanted and to make the ends meet. This is the other trouble brewing inside the vaunted melting pot: if the host society makes you pay the price for getting there, what price are the guests willing to pay to forge the new identity, what are the cultural codes to keep and those to let die?
The open space of the streets is treacherous, the buildings close the horizon, unless they are just ruins. Even the wide floor of a ball threaten to crumble under rivalry as a helpless educator tries to bring peace, a bumbling character signaling the failure of institutions to tackle the discontent and the rage. It is in smaller, more intimate, places that hope can survive. “Something’s Coming”, Tony still sings, on parole after a jail sentence for a brawl that got too far. Yes a change for the better is in the offing, but only because he is working hard on the grocery run by Valentina: he glides and hops, singing, through the shop, the workplace as a place safe from the temptation of violence embodied by Riff who had paid a visit. Later Tony spots Maria in the improvised ball room, and so she does: but dance and flirt take place behind the room’s tiers, in the narrowest space possible. Love is an intimate affair, and a sanctuary from the outer world.
And indeed, it is in a holy place, a remote convent, that Tony and Maria talk frankly about each other and get symbolically engaged, shrouded in warm varicolored lights coming from the stained glass windows, reminiscent of the rays of light framing the characters’ stares when they earlier spotted the loved one for the first time. Cinematography and behaviors wonderfully highlight just how luminous, illuminating this love is, the power it represents, making a young girl claiming “I feel pretty”, not only dreaming aloud, but also thrilling her colleagues cleaning the floors of a department store, cheerfully spurring a group of women to celebrate love and success. Tony’s desire to set up a mixed family remarkably reflects the life of the old dear Valentina, whose white husband established the grocery. Valentina stands for the bruised but vivid memory of happiness, and would mourn the tragic ending of the romance, a witness to the best and worst as her neighborhood changes – and as the narrative shifts: it is deeply moving to watch the character, who did not exist in the 1961 film, played by the actress who in this earlier version had the part of Anita, a very touching bond between the two films, symbol of an artistic endeavor and passion getting passed on graciously and brilliantly, a nostalgia that still begets a fresh view of the story, a great remake that is a riveting reinvention.
Love can also blind in the worst ways: Chino, now a clumsy intellectual type, thought he could be loved by Maria but defeated and shocked by the death of Bernardo would kill Tony. This dark twist is an essential part of the story, but in this case it just underlines how somber it has become, how rage and tragedy are framing the love story, in a tough and changing world riven by divisions and prejudices. That depiction of the late 1950s America is gritty and in a way more straightforward, concrete, honest than what was shot in 1961, an impression bolstered by a casting picked cautiously, championing Hispanic talents. The care for every details and props convey the amazing sentiment to watch the real thing: here is a reconstruction that as compelling than the original images, evidence of the relentless, intense drive of director Steven Spielberg, who is arguably delivering one of his best movies. His powerful shot compositions match finely the quality, the beauty, the melody of the score which ranked among the best that the genre has produced, and the lyrics of Steven Sondheim and the music of Leonard Bernstein feel as good as before and look as rightly illustrated as they should. The refreshed choreography is a new tour de force, terrific ensembles capturing the energy and the strength of the young characters as they fight to dominate the city space.