StevenSpielberg had wanted to film a new version of the 1957 musical West Side Story, which was first adapted in 1961 in a film that won Best Picture, for several years before filming began in July of 2019. This new version, with a script by Tony Kushner that hews more closely to the original stage play at several points, was delayed by a year due to the pandemic, but came out in time to be eligible for this year’s Oscars, earning seven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Ariana DuBose. It’s better than the 1961 film in some ways, worse in others, making it a perfectly fine film that nobody actually needed.
The framework of the story is the same as that of the first film: Two gangs of street toughs are engaged in a turf war on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the largely Puerto Rican Sharks and the white Jets, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez) and Riff (Mike Faist), respectively. Tony used to be in the Jets before he went to jail, and is trying to go straight now that he’s home, but at a community dance where both gangs arrive with their girls, he meets Bernardo’s sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), and the two fall immediately in love. Tony works at Doc’s, which is managed by Doc’s Puerto Rican widow (Rita Moreno), who advises him against pursuing Maria while helping him learn some Spanish phrases. Bernardo isn’t happy to see his sister with a white guy, and wants her to marry his friend Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), while Bernardo himself is with Maria’s friend Anita (DuBose). The two gangs decide to hold a “rumble,” a fight that ends up leaving two dead and has disastrous consequences for the star-crossed lovers.
I’ll save the biggest problem for last, but one major flaw in this version of West Side Story is that Ansel Elgort sucks. He wasn’t good in Baby Driver, where he barely had to do anything, but he’s awful here in every way – he’s stiff, uncharismatic, and dull, and his singing is the worst of any major character. Casting him was a poor choice, underscored by how much better Faist is as Riff – he’s a rascal, but has all the charm that Elgort lacks, and he owns every scene the two have together. Zegler is far better as a singer and actor than Elgort is, and unlike most of the cast, looks close to the age of her character. In general, the women in the film outshine the men, and the Jets’ big number, “Officer Krupke,” is one of the songs that’s clearly inferior to that of the original film.
There are some small differences from the 1961 film that do improve the end result, not least of which is employing Latinx actors as the Sharks and their girlfriends. The original had Natalie Wood, the daughter of Russian immigrants, in the lead role as Maria, and George Chakiris, the son of Greek immigrants, as her brother Bernardo. Both used comically bad accents that sounded more like mockery than imitation. Zegler and Elgort do their own singing, which neither of their counterparts did in the 1961 film. The character of Anybodys, a tomboyish Jets wannabe played by Susan Oakes in the original, is now much more fleshed out here, depicted as a trans man and played by iris menas, a nonbinary and trans actor. It’s a win for representation, but also adds substantially to the story, with Anybodys the character who gains the most in depth and screen time between the original and the remake. The audio quality is improved, of course, although sometimes that works against the singers, such as the men in “America,” whose vocals sound tinny, especially in comparison to the women on that song.
West Side Story can’t escape its fundamental, ontological problem: There is no good reason for this film to exist. The story is the same. The songs are all the same. The choreography is the same – perhaps captured more effectively by better camerawork and modern technology, but it’s still the same old song and dance. Elgort is a dud, a poor actor and mediocre singer whose hold on Maria is hard to believe. It’s a nostalgia play for Spielberg, and I’m sure 20th Century/Disney thought it would be a huge moneymaker, although that was foiled by the pandemic. For this film to get seven Oscar nominations while the superior In the Heights got zero – not even one for a song! – is a travesty.
I agree with a lot of what you say here, Keith. I don’t like Elgort, though I don’t think he was quite as bad as you did. That may be because I had the lowest of expectations for him and I felt he at least cleared that hurdle. I also agree that the film was both better and worse in places than the original film version.
My biggest complaint of the film was the placement of “I Feel Pretty.” It happened after the “rumble.” I leaned over to my sister in the theater and asked, “Wasn’t this song BEFORE the ‘rumble’ in the original?” The pacing of the film was thrown for a huge loop by putting that song after the film’s most violent moment.
I was, too, surprised by the Oscar nominations it received. Kinda proved that 2021 ended up being a below average year. I thought Ariana DuBose was fine, but I admit I’ll be a little disappointed if she wins, for two reasons. The first being that Rita Moreno won the same award for the same role, and the second being that I hate when they give Best Supporting Actress to someone who sings their way to the award rather than acts. Looking at Jennifer Hudson and Anne Hathaway there. I also just thought that Kirsten Dunst and Aunjanue Ellis were better.
But you said it best: this film, like pretty much all remakes, didn’t need to exist.
In the stage play, the rumble closes Act 1, and “I Feel Pretty” opens Act 2, so this film restores the original order. I suppose you’d get the intermission to break up the emotional contrast, but you do get the irony and discomfort of Maria singing that song without knowing what has happened.
That does explain things a little bit better. I’d never seen the original play, so I was unaware of that. I’m sure that an intermission would kind of reset things for the audience. I can also see why Robert Wise or Ernest Lehman or whoever it was decided to change the placement in the original.
I actually liked Elgort as a singer. He had a very retro sound to him, reminding me of Gene Kelly, never the greatest vocalist, though Elgort lacks the charm and twinkle in his eye that made Kelly a legend.
I’ve also never seen the original because musicals where the leads don’t do their own singing don’t interest me.
“…a remake that just didn’t need to happen”
Isn’t that most remakes, frankly? Unless you count any film that’s better than the original (Magnificent Seven? Casino Royale?), the only remake I can think of that NEEDED to happen is Airplane!.
As Roger Ebert once said, it’s the bad films that should be remade, not the classics.
Ocean’s Eleven comes to mind as a remake that exceeded the original – Soderbergh took a mediocre movie, reimagined it, and made a great film.
I could also see remaking certain movies to get around anything that hasn’t aged well, from content to specific actors.
“I could also see remaking certain movies to get around anything that hasn’t aged well, from content to specific actors.”
Couldn’t you argue this applies to West Side Story, to actually get Latinx actors playing the key roles for the Puerto Rican gang?
Overall, I agree this didn’t need to be made, but at the very least I found this **better** than the original.
I found Elgort better than expected here. It wasn’t just the singing that was retro as noted here, but the performance as well.
I completely agree with Keith’s take on Oh So Pretty. I found myself noting that it was the last time Maria would be innocent or truly happy in the story.
I think Spielberg & Kushner offer some rationale for its existence: the struggle at the heart of the story – to whom does America belong – is as relevant today as it was in 1961, if not moreso, and they also introduce some elements of populism in the notion that the Jets and the Sharks are busy fighting each other in the midst of the rubble being left by the upper class that is gentrifying their neighborhood, instead of fighting that upper class together, another piece that was present in the original but which deserves to be highlighted and gains new resonance today.
Spielberg also did a great job of contextualizing dance as an act of expression: whether in joy, sexual release, violence or fear, the dancing in this version of the movie felt like a natural expression of emotion bursting out of the characters, something even more primal and urgent than the singing (and far more expressive than words, the lowest and least effective form of communication in this world). Staging “Cool” as a dance fight between Tony and Riff over the gun, the whole confrontation playing out with the two characters fighting literally on the edge of their world, almost makes the whole endeavor worth it all on its own.