When You’re a Shark
The modern Romeo and Juliet musical West Side Story has more angles than a Swarovski crystal: read it as a story of urban removal, groove to stylized violence, watch as a gritty dance fest, listen to amazing synergy between Latin jazz and classical beats, dream in the richly colored love story.
I saw Spielberg’s remake of the 1961 Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise classic at the newly revived Bantam Cinema & Arts Center, a two-screen art house in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut which went under during the pandemic closures. The old Bantam Cinema originated as a silent film movie house and theater back in 1929 but has long served local movie buffs with excellent film fare. Community forces, especially Ken Merz and Robert Kwalick, reconstituted the beloved venue as a non-profit and they recently managed to open a new season, featuring West Side Story and Joel Cohen’s Macbeth. I have always loved seeing movies here, with its comforting slideshow of the same old ads, including my favorite of a time-lapse tree crew trimming a stand of trees blocking the view from a a country house.
Tony Kushner has updated some of the creakier elements in the film to sharpen themes such as urban renewal and ethnic turmoil. He negotiates some landmines in the film’s portrayal of Ricans, although the Sharks do not get as fully characterized as the boys in the Jets gang. However, the Sharks are a totally Latinx cast, and Puerto Rican pride dots the bilingual conversations. Tuning into the historical ear — how we hear things differently in different time periods — helps us understand how changing musical interpretations respond to the times. When I saw West Side Story in the 1960s, I had never heard any salsa, other than maybe some Ricky Ricardo beats on I Love Lucy. To explore this evolution in listening, sample the fabulous Bobby Sanabria Nuyorican interpretations of Bernstein’s score on his Latin Jazz show on WBGO . He features tenor sax player Ted Nash and adds latin flavors and instruments to bring out the salsa influences that Bernstein channeled back in the early ’60s. Note also, the untranslated Spanish dialogue that appears naturally throughout the film — this is a worthy nod to the bilingual nature of NYC, a city now nearly one third Latino.
The choreography draws on Jerome Robbins’ inimitable original but throws in many energetic maneuvers that remind us how street dancing has evolved since the heady days of demolishing San Juan Hill to build Lincoln Center on New York’s Upper West Side. Justin Peck, the resident choreographer at New York City Ballet, animates the screen and taps the energy of young street guys in propulsive group work. See, for example Peck’s hipster The Times Are Racing pas de deux filmed in the 7 line Hudson Yards subway station, bristling with madcap tap and electronic reverb. In Story, organized Jet and Shark force fields pour the gang through the streets, playgrounds and bodegas like a tsunami. The jumps are spectacular but I like these leaping lads even more when they execute acutely angled side moves that flash elbows out like blades, even as crouches mobilize power to shoot from half squat to airborne. Ariana DeBose is fabulous as Anita, Bernardo’s girlfriend — bold, sassy, sexy, mercurial — equally smashing as a dancer and singer. Aerial shots remind us of the 1930s legacy of Busby Berkeley dance spectaculars, while situating the action in a rough-hewn ‘hood envelope. Bernardo played by Montreal-born David Alvarez (catch his young performance in Billy Elliot) agilely partners the whirlwind DeBose and reminds us how little acknowledgement of salsa dance technique was made back in the disco days of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
The cinematography is wonderful, studded with gems such as a seductively lit conversation on two sides of a ladder, or the exhilarating opening sequence of block by block ruins, with the camera floating over stacks of rusty fire escapes and pyramids of chipped brick. Or the stunning closing credits which use time-lapse footage of shadows on rough urban walls, rising and falling in graceful arcs. Cinematographer Janusz Kamínski has collaborated with Spielberg since 1993 (Academy awards for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) and he expressively infuses the film with significant color, to contrast with pans of the somber silhouettes of demolition.
Both the lyrics and the score stand up well. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein still have edginess in their book, and the campiness of the original is lightly transformed in this remake, as though the memory of the classic were best served by quotation rather than full blown mimicry. As usual, Spielberg can’t resist little dollops of mush here and there, he has never liberated himself from a tendency to suburban sentiment. But the taut quality of Bernstein’s score usually provides a saving astringency.
Ansel Elgort plays the romantic tenor Tony, a smooth-faced hunk whose rather icky screen presence (at least in close-ups) is redeemed by an exceptional voice: sonorous, smooth, confident in every register and gracefully modulated. Rachel Zegler as Maria seems very young.but her pure voice, direct and unornamented, prevents her version of the role from dropping into sweet sixteen smaltz. The singing in general is excellent, and directed in a manner that keeps the sugar in check. Fans of the original film will applaud the reappearance of the marvelous Rita Moreno (she played Anita back in 1961), whose anthem in the wake of Bernardo and Riff’s death hits just the right note.
Although critics have given this film a thumping, I feel the performances, cast, dancing, singing and cinematography redeem it, while, of course, remaining unable to replace the Bernstein/Sondheim/Robbins classic.