A Storied Musical

Marching boldly into the "don't remake movies I loved from my childhood" debate is Steven Spielberg, who chose for his remake a movie that predated the childhood of most people who seem to make that complaint most. West Side Story is a bold remake choice, a movie that won Best Picture and 9 other Oscars. But then, it is Steven Spielberg we're talking about. If anyone could do it, it's him, right? In my estimation: he did it. I found the new West Side Story to be superior to the original, arguably as good as any version of West Side Story could be.

Here's my real "hot take": I think the biggest flaw of West Side Story is not inherent to the original movie, or even the script for the play, but from the source material, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The preposterous pace and intensity of the romance between the two main characters defies reality -- particularly the actions by Romeo/Tony that are forgiven (or that don't even seem to register) for Juliet/Maria. I mean... I guess I'll avoid 60-year-old spoilers here (430-year old spoilers?), but if you know the story, you must know what I'm talking about. Fawning lovers, not balletic gang members, are the toughest thing to swallow about West Side Story.

Accepting that you kind of just can't shore up that part of the story, Spielberg's new take on West Side Story brings basically everything else into sharper focus. A new script by Tony Kushner preserves the major moments of the tale, while crystallizing the race and class grievances, heightening the sense of danger, and being worlds more thoughtful in its portrayal of Puerto Rican immigrants (including lots of Spanish dialogue that is not subtitled for the audience).

And while the movie keeps all the classic songs with only rare lyric changes, a great many are recontextualized in incredibly clever and impactful ways. Going into details here would spoil perhaps the main appeal of this movie for fans of the original, but suffice it to say that the scale of almost every song is changed: "monologues" to a theater audience become confessions to other characters, dance sequences are transposed into different locations, and sometimes even who is singing a given song changes. I find each of these changes to be in service of more than simply mixing things up: they all serve to make the story land more effectively.

The choreography by Justin Peck is a thoughtful blend of homage to the original with new, more aggressive moves. The cinematography by Janusz Kamiński is a wonder; lighting and camera movements are delivered with gallery-ready precision. And Spielberg either elicits or gets out of the way of a number of fantastic performances from his cast.

Two that I would single out? Mike Faist as Riff is dangerous and charismatic. His character is crazy and committed, a rebel with just one cause and nothing to lose. At the top of the pyramid, I'd put Ariana DeBose as Anita. Where nearly every other character in West Side Story is entrenched in a single emotion, Anita goes through wild swings. DeBose nails them all, and delivers each of her songs with strength and gusto. Plus, she does it all with the specter hanging over her of another performer having already won an Oscar for the same role. She even has to act in perhaps the movie's most critical scene with Rita Moreno, the very woman who won that Oscar. If I were an Academy voter, I'd make sure DeBose was nominated for a chance to make history: two different performers winning an Oscar for different versions of the same character.

For me personally, suspension of disbelief will only take me so far when it comes to West Side Story. But, like I said, I don't think I can imagine telling the story any better than this -- not, at least, without discarding major plot points entirely. I give Spielberg's take on the material a B+. It's a case study in why it can be OK to remake classics (especially generations later).