Steven Spielberg's WestSideStory is both an homage to the original (and old-school Hollywood) and a revision that adds a sense of urgency to this landmark play. It already feels like a classic. The Rolling Stone review
like the musical was actually back. Not really. Not until now. Not until the moment you see those next-gen Jets started snapping their fingers.’s all-in adaptation of the landmark Broadway musical and remake of the 1961 Oscar winner, aims to be as exhilarating and breathtaking as humanly possible. It wildly succeeds, as do many of the classic set pieces we know and love, with flying colors .
But the creative team wants to draw a line between the toxic attitudes of the 1950s and now, and while the more overt nudges in regard to the present may bruise your ribs a bit, they do underline how perpetual all of this is. The disenfranchised continue to look down on people who still have to work twice as hard for half as much and prove they are “real” citizens; when the head Shark calls his enemy a derogatory term for Polish people, his girlfriend says, “you sound like an American.
That, and the casting. Gone are the white actors in brown makeup — which even Rita Moreno had to wear in 1961 — replaced with a screen version in which Latinx performers play Latinx characters. Welcome to the 21st century,! And the young ensemble Spielberg has assembled, from the lead to the background dancers, is what keeps this from feeling like a superiorly staged museum piece.
So much is the same in this new version, from the way Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics and Leonard Bernstein’s music seem like a match made in heaven to the way the skewed story ofhugs its tragic contours.
And so much depends on Spielberg’s facility and skill in telling a story through sound and vision, which can be simple as some tracking movements he and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski deploy to the image of leather-jacketed toughs casting German Expressionist shadows before a battle royal. It’s awakened his excitement not just for entertaining or sermonizing but for honest-to-god moviemaking.
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