60 years removed from the original West Side Story, all-time great director, Steven Spielberg, takes a crack at the iconic musical alongside frequent collaborator and cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski. In a whirlwind of song and dance, West Side Story illustrates a love letter to the original, as well as how it inspired generations of moviegoers and film-makers with it’s theatrical storytelling beats. Starring Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, and Mike Faist, West Side Story elevates Steven Spielberg back into a form he’s been distanced from for quite some time. It chimes with the echoes of the past through life sized images, flamboyant choreography, blaring color, and dazzling musical numbers that resurrect the lost art of the musical.
The art of the musical has been lost in the current generation of film-making. What once was practical sets and ginormous casts and crew maneuvering them, has been exchanged for flat, uninteresting, underused computer generated sets with no proper elevation towards the grand practicality of song and dance. Musicals have become mundane, zippy, or overproduced, and the art of what once made them great has evaporated into thin air. When we compare notes on something such as West Side Story to The Greatest Showman, sure, we can pinpoint catchy tracks, but we can note why one works better than the other. It’s always going to be the camerawork that distances a great musical from a bad one. The same can be said about any movie, really, but the work done in West Side Story goes beyond into something magical. Every musical number is alive and roaring through each image. Our focal points rest on Maria or Tony, Anita or Riff, but the extended cast zip through images, opening up the environment, the room, the streets of New York. It’s staged in a specific way that allows us to become one with the art of song and dance. The camera often angles itself to dial in on a specific emotion that ends up being intruded by people outside the frame to close in on another. The sequence of images will reopen to allow the background to explode with color, dress twirls, and leg kicks. It’s all tangible too. The ceilings are real. The floor is real. The music is diegetic and not birthed from some mixing board behind-the-scenes. The big number in the gym is a tremendous example of the possibilities that a musical can offer. It’s design is so intricate and fine that seeing two characters shadowed by bleachers masking their immediate surroundings becomes romantic and surreal. Movies, simply put, have a really hard time doing that right now.
Which comes as no surprise that someone as capable as Spielberg was able to make it come together with few seams. The age of the story’s structure shows too often, but it’s attempts to update a timeless classic allow this to be a satisfying blend of past and present. It’s adoration for the material breathes with life in every image, so much so, that puddles and fire escapes are the only places anyone wants to be. Spielberg has no issue emulating the original beat to beat, but it comes with an intent to expand the canvas, instead of shrinking it to the point of erasure. It abides by its 50 year-old rules, and for some that’ll show signs of wear and tear, but it doubles down on making the audience wonder how they managed to do this at all. Not once, but twice. It’s strokes are magical, inspiring, and beaming with bright white smiles between glossy red lips. Dirty hands and greased hair define the Jets, the beauty of culture defies them and infuses New York with personality. Every ounce of design in this movie from the traits of it’s characters to the backbone of the conflict, is noted and remarkable.
It’d be criminal to go without mentioning the movie star turns from Rachel Zegler as Maria, Arian DeBose as Anita, Mike Faist as Riff, and David Alvarez as Bernado. It should be a defining trait of Spielberg’s to make borderline unknowns become instant stars. It’s attributed to his patience in being able to hold a shot to allow his actors to make the most of a moment or scene, but trusting them to act is the reason why he continues to be amongst the greats. Faist is magic, so are the rest, but there is something about his performance as Riff that feels like someone traveled back to the 60s and plucked him off the streets. Perhaps because of how great the costuming and makeup are, but they fill their characters’ shoes with incredible confidence. They are never autotuned to mask their abilities either. Their throat rumbles in song as they hold a note, grit their teeth, or dash a smile. They tumble across sets and dance with one another in a way that seems impossible considering how often the talents of many performers are hidden from the audience. There is a resounding sense of reward and love for the audience as well. West Side Story wasn’t remade to spend money on another Hollywood Classic to recycle profit, it’s made to generate an emotion because of how it wants us to experience these characters in this story. Zegler’s petite size compared to Elgort’s towering height, or DeBose’s smile next to Alvarez’s smirk is specific and memorable. Within every image there is something for the audience’s eyes to catch, and very few filmmakers do that as well as Spielberg.
When it’s all said and done; will the remake of West Side Story stand alongside the original? It’s hard to say. With minimal box office returns in a typically heavy financial season for the movies, this remake may be swept under the rug as the original dances on. When you look at the intent behind the picture, there is a vivid sense of passion for the material. It’s updated, but unafraid to be what it always has been, and so many movies could learn a lot from that choice. In a remake, reboot, prequel, sequel, spin-off heavy era, it’s good to know that there is room for movies that have no interest in being anything other than a singular experience that can’t be mutually shared with anything else. It’s so specific at every level, that an obsession with the details could have undermined the entire operation, but having some of the greats behind the camera never allows this film to fall prey to typical trappings. It’s a film that is feverishly obsessed with the original material, that understands the identity musical expression can create through visual artistic flourishes. It may be a lot like the original in it’s blueprints, but it forms its own voice through it’s multicultural personalities. Which allows 2021’s West Side Story to be the type of remake we should see more often. It doesn’t uplift it’s material to idolization, or rearrange it to the point of being unrecognizable. It understands how to expand the canvas that someone else painted on. The entire cast and crew seems to understand that to love what Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins did in 1961, is to partner with it by dancing to the same beats.