‘We’ll find a way of forgiving’

David Jones on how love always breaks down walls of prejudice and intolerance.

STEVEN Spielberg, who is considered the greatest film director of his generation, and gave us ET, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List and many more groundbreaking films, is to direct a remake of the 1961 musical West Side Story.

The original Broadway show was ground breaking and the film which followed won ten Oscars and remains in the top ten musicals of all time.

The story, set in Manhattan’s 1950s West Side tells of the rivalries between communities and gangs of different ethnic origins.

Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the music and dance sequences are still considered to be the best in modern musical theatre. The Shakespearian parallels are unmistakable and Leonard Bernstein’s score including such songs as Maria Tonight and I Feel Pretty have stood the test of time.

The film was shot in New York, the condemned tenements of Manhattan delayed from demolition to be the back drop of the story.

The story introduces us to Maria and Tony, two young people brought up on the opposite sides of a divided city where lines of separation were never to be crossed.

Somehow finding each other, they attempt to heal those divides and dispel the ethnic suspicion and hatred in which they had lived all their young lives.

Last weekend’s two mass shooting in the USA many see as the consequence of careless pomposity inciting racial tension and hatred.

The Apostle Paul, once a man of deep prejudice and hatred towards the early Christian believers, stood over the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian Martyr. The Bible says “he approved”.

God, however, was soon to break his fanaticism, so much so that he went on to preach of the transforming love of God in Jesus. Paul’s life and teaching from then on were filled with gentleness and peace with no trace of what had been. Down through the generations that message remains, it’s power to change and save unchanged.

Such love always breaks down walls of prejudice and intolerance.

One of the songs from West Side Story expresses the hope that Tony and Maria had for their future life together – “We’ll find a new way of living; we’ll find a way of forgiving - Somewhere” God’s words of peace and forgiveness that will forever drown the vocabulary of hate and division.