Zegler helps make new ‘West Side Story’ spectacular
On one hand, it feels unnecessary, this reimagining of “West Side Story” from veteran director Steven Spielberg.
After all, we already have an excellently crafted, Academy Award-winning adaptation of the enduring 1957 musical-theater work in codirectors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 “West Side Story.”
Sure, that film feels dated in spots six decades later. It’s certainly hard today to see those Jets and Sharks as the toughest-looking of street gangs, for example. Nonetheless, it remains a tremendous cinematic work.
So, too, is the update, fortunately.
In the production notes for the film hitting theaters this week, the director of films ranging from “Jaws” to “The Color Purple” to “Schindler’s List” — who counted the late Wise among his close friends and talked to him about the original “ad nauseam” — says this may have been the most daunting challenge of his decorated career.
“It’s very intimidating to take a masterpiece and make it through different eyes and different sensibilities without compromising the integrity of what is generally considered the greatest music ever written for the theater,” Spielberg says, adding he believes great stories should be told again and again.
“You have to demand of yourself, over and over again, justification for treading on what feels like sacred ground. We all did that. The riskiness of this enterprise was not lost on any of us. But everyone involved entered this project with tremendous love and respect, bordering on reverence, for the show and obviously for its legendary creators.”
That is how the “West Side Story” crafted by Spielberg and a number of acclaimed collaborators, including Tony Award-winning writer Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”), plays — like an incredibly loving tribute to the musical and first film.
It certainly doesn’t try to invent the storytelling wheel. The plot mechanics are ever so slightly different, but this “West Side Story” is, of course, set in 1950s New York City and is heavily inspired by Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” And while the Broadway show’s iconic musical numbers have gotten exciting new treatments, the genius of composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim comes through loudly and clearly on a state-of-the-art theater sound system.
In case you don’t know, “West Side Story” surrounds the tensions between a white gang, the Jets, and their Puerto Rican counterparts, the Sharks, as well as the blossoming love between former Jet Tony and Maria, sister of the Sharks’ leader. Cast in these key roles are Ansel Elgort, star of “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Baby Driver,” and the lesser-known Rachel Zegler.
Elgort infuses Tony — who has served a year in prison for a violent crime and remains close friends with Jet leader Riff (theater actor Mike Faist) despite trying to live a better existence — with a tenderness that belies his past Jet ways and makes you like him instantly.
It is Zegler, though, who consistently lights up the screen and delights the ears with her performance. Best known for vocal performances posted to YouTube, she beat out myriad other contenders for the role, starting with a tape of her singing “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story.” She’s a real find.
The star-crossed lovers are terrific together, a sequence that takes place after their love-at-first-sight meeting at a dance proving to be captivating as it culminates in the number “Balcony Scene (Tonight).” When Tony finally agrees to leave Maria for the night, she quickly calls to him and then pauses when he eagerly returns to face her again.
“I forgot why I called you,” she says in a daze.
“I’ll wait for you to remember,” he says softly.
It’s adorable.
Of course, “West Side Story” is much rougher at other points, with the factions led by Riff and Maria’s brother, Bernardo (David Alvarez), cruising toward what could prove to be a deadly rumble in the streets. The cops — represented primarily by Officer Krupke (Brian d’Arcy James of “Spotlight”) and Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll, “The Many Saints of Newark”) — do not want to see that take place, but the latter certainly wouldn’t mind the Jets running the Sharks out of the neighborhood.
While the Jets and Sharks still do not feel like the most intimidating of gangs, the situation is more believable in this film thanks to casting and other choices by the filmmakers. For example, this version of Bernardo is a prizefighter, and Alvarez (the stage musical “Billy Elliot”) looks like he could handle himself in the ring.
Other players worth a mention are Ariana DeBose (“Hamilton,” “The Prom”), who as Bernardo’s girlfriend, “Anita,” shows off her songand-dance chops in an electrifying version of “America”; and Rita Moreno, who portrayed Anita in the earlier film. Although the veteran actress’ scenes as Valentina, who owns the shop in which Tony works, aren’t anything extraordinary, her inclusion nonetheless is a lovely bridging of past and present.
Spielberg deserves so much credit for just how well this “West Side Story” works, but he gets help from a bunch of talented folks. Included among them are longtime collaborators such production designer Adam Stockhausen (“Bridge of Spies”), editor Michael Kahn (“Saving Private Ryan,” “The Post”) and, last but not least, director of photography Janusz Kaminski (“Saving Private Ryan,” “The Post”), whose work here is nextlevel.
This new “West Side Story” may not have been necessary, but it is spectacular.