Hearing the lyrics so soon after Sondheim's death is a reminder of how irreplaceable he was. As Tony walks through the night streets singing Maria, Elgort's voice is clear and light, capturing the exhilaration of Bernstein's music. This is where the film truly takes off, soaring into their romance. Bernardo, furious that this white boy would even look at his sister, forces them apart, but by then their bond has already taken hold. Elgort's earnest performance gives Tony endearing sincerity, and Zegler – in her first film role – is the ideal Maria, a young woman brimming with life and hope. But soon Tony and Maria's eyes lock and they meet under the bleachers in a silent, elegant ballet of their own. Anita, in a layered, dynamic performance by Ariana DeBose, is the centre of attention, swirling her skirt and dancing to the Latin rhythms that infuse the film. Tony and Maria finally meet at a dance at a gym. Moreno and Valentina blend together to become the soul and conscience of this new version.īut the essence of West Side Story is still its ill-fated love affair. Sharp-eyed and kind, she is played with a centred calm by none other than Rita Moreno, who won the best supporting actress Oscar as Bernardo's girlfriend, Anita, in the original film. And in the film's most inspired innovation, the drugstore where Tony works is no longer owned by a man named Doc, but by his widow, Valentina. It can be hard to buy the change from hothead to sensitive soul, but the shift adds another layer of tragic irony. Here he is on parole, having spent a year in prison for beating another man nearly to death, a stint that has left him determined to reform. One of Kushner's variations is to give Tony a new history. Twirling and leaping down the mean streets of the New York's Upper West Side, the Sharks and Jets are still the most balletic punks ever. Peck's choreography throughout keeps the DNA of Robbins's but adds an athleticism that makes it feel fresh. The film spends a bit too much time setting up this conflict and introducing the Sharks, the Puerto Rican gang led by Maria's brother, Bernardo (David Alvarez), and the Jets, the white gang founded by Tony and his best friend, Riff (Mike Faist).
Both the Puerto Rican and poor white residents of the area are about to be displaced, and Kushner's screenplay leans hard on that real-life disenfranchisement, as well as the ethnic rivalry. The camera passes over the rubble of an area recently cleared by the New York Housing Authority – as "slum clearance" according to a sign – in order to make way for the new Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The opening scene signals another important difference.
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The 1961 film version may have won 10 Oscars, but it's hopelessly stage-bound – as 1960s movie musicals often were – and Spielberg's never is. But the film is also purely cinematic in the way the camera tells the story, swooping into the middle of a musical number at a gym, looking down from overhead on dancers filling the streets, gazing in close-up at Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) as they fall in love. This new version is still set in 1957, and the artifice of its studio set, with tenement buildings and empty lots, is deliberate, evoking the story's origins on stage.
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Full of energy, wit, passion and tragedy, looking backward and forward at once, it is one of the most moving films of the year. Directed by Steven Spielberg at his most masterful, with a smartly-conceived screenplay by Tony Kushner and crisp new choreography by Justin Peck, the film honours the production's roots while giving it a 21st-Century sensibility. And there is a similar alchemy in the glorious new version. There was a magical, once-in-a-lifetime quality in that initial collaboration: Leonard Bernstein's heart-piercingly beautiful music, Stephen Sondheim's trenchant yet romantic lyrics, Arthur Laurents's book and Jerome Robbins' classically-inspired choreography.
Eternal works of art can be endlessly transformed, much the way West Side Story itself turned Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, complete with balcony scene, into the story of Tony and Maria, young lovers from opposite sides of an ethnic divide in a crumbling New York City neighbourhood. West Side Story, first staged on Broadway in 1957, is timeless, which isn't anything like being trapped in the past.