• West Side Story (2021)

2/12/22 (Sat)

I was equally excited by and wary of the idea of a new film version of West Side Story (see here). The 1961 film, as with the original stage show four years earlier, was portraying contemporary events by people who were there. Any remake would necessarily involve a reinterpretation of the story filtered through a modern sensibility, and it was hardly a comfort that it was being led by the ever-woke team of director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner. The original show, which portrays a turf war between Polish-American and Puerto Rican social outcasts, has been criticized by some as an outmoded, semi-racist piece by four Jewish white guys (choreographer, writer, composer, lyricist), though you could also say four gay guys if that helps. The last Broadway revival in 2020, which I did not see, was reportedly an extreme makeover with a distinctly modern perspective, including references to Black Lives Matters, extensive use of video screens, and modern dance in place of Jerome Robbins’ iconic ballet-inspired choreography. That closed quickly due to the pandemic but did not subsequently reopen, suggesting that the producers didn’t have much confidence in its commercial prospects. It was hard to say what to expect with Spielberg, though the previews encouragingly looked like a more traditional approach.

As an aside, musicals don’t get any bigger in Japan. The tremendous success of the original film gave way to a Japanese-language stage version in 1964 that almost single-handedly (along with My Fair Lady) inspired a musical boom in the country lasting to this day. The new film, out elsewhere in the world last December, did not debut here until now, which seemed strange given the title’s potency. I had expected a strong showing, enhanced by its slew of Oscar nominations a few days earlier. In the event, the theater was only 60% filled on the second day, which seems underwhelming. The verdict is still out on its reception here.

The most notable feature of the new film is that it speaks a different language than all previous versions, and that’s not referring to the English/Spanish divide (more on that below). Spielberg’s film does not speak the language of dance – not just the choreography, but the entire concept of dance as a means to tell the story. The convention in musical theater is that what you can’t say, you sing, and what you can’t sing, you dance. The stage show broke new ground in musical theater in its extensive use of dance to convey the nature of the characters as well as propel the plot. The idea of greasers twirling around the stage sounds pretty dumb on the surface, but Robbins made it work from the show’s opening moments with some of the most exciting pieces in musical theater. The stage work has a literate book and thrilling music, but it’s unquestionably dance that defines it. The old film admittedly feels rather stage-bound with all those long shots despite its location shooting, but it does preserve the original choreography at the show’s heart, the element that made the musical special in the first place.

Justin Peck’s choreography in the new film appears random bits rather than of a piece (as in his recent Carousel), though the heavy editing might have made it hard to sustain an idea anyway. “Dance at the Gym”, one of the show’s highlights, was movements strung together rather than full dances. Tony and Maria’s first encounter wasn’t integrated into the dance at all as in the original, where their movements told us all we needed to know without a word being spoken. Here, they simply hid behind the bleachers out of sight of the dancing and chatted, which brings the moment crashing to dull reality (“You’re tall” – okay). Romance just doesn’t bloom as convincingly in words, especially Kushner’s. An opportunity wasted. “America” was creative and fun but more focused on making the scene “interesting” than getting the point across. The casting notice for the film had stated, “A background in dance is also encouraged.” Encouraged?? That the cast was obviously being chosen for reasons other than dance was depressing, and it’s sad to say that my concerns were realized.

On the other hand, “I Feel Pretty” was nicely re-imagined in an upscale department store (I notice they understandably switched the lyric back to the stage show’s “I feel pretty and witty and bright” from the earlier film’s “… and gay”), and the “Quintet” was superb. Putting Tony in “Cool”, and placing it earlier in the action as in the stage show, was a surprising idea that paid off, including an added subplot involving a struggle with his friend Riff over a gun. In addition, the rumble was well staged, and the action moved swiftly from that point to a moving ending (though the absence of a final “Somewhere” was a big loss). So while the new film can hardly be called a dance musical – something I thought I’d never say about West Side Story – it did have its moments.

The other major shift in this film is the politics. That aspect doesn’t take long to make itself felt: the film opens with the pan of a slum being torn down to make way for Lincoln Center, apparently a symbol for the filmmakers of upper-crust whites (which would presume Hispanics don’t go to theater or classical concerts – but let’s not go there). I think they’re criticizing slum removal as anti-Hispanic, but honestly I heard the same arguments about other groups when they cleaned out 42nd Street, a project that’s turned out pretty well. The Jets, a gang consisting largely of lower-class Polish-Americans (read: white), are shown marching across the debris to paint over a mural of a Puerto Rican flag in a show of strength over their rivals, the Puerto Rican-led Sharks, in a territorial dispute. The Sharks face them down with a rousing version of the Puerto Rican national anthem, which had me thinking: if the musical had gone with its original idea of a Catholic-Jewish conflict, would the latter have responded with a rendering of “Hatikvah”?

In any event, this pretty much sets the tone for the show, which plays up US specifics over universality. Kushner works to give the characters back stories: Tony is a former convict out on parole, Bernardo is a boxer, Maria wants to go to college, and so forth. Who needs that? I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who argued that delving too deeply into the individual lives would destroy the balance in the show among two disparate groups that are equally at fault for the senseless hatred and violence (think: Montagues and Capulets). The show does its best to show the Hispanics in a good light; for instance, the Hispanics all seem to have jobs, while the whites other than ex-convict Tony do not. What’s up with that? Whatever the social ills suffered by the Puerto Ricans shouldn’t be the point here. The Jets are themselves alienated lower-class youths who see no place or future for themselves in American society, as “Gee, Officer Krupke” so adeptly shows. It would have been nice if the film had given them their due. Kushner is writing a different show than the playwright Arthur Laurents – never mind Shakespeare and his “two households, both alike in dignity” (the very first line of R&J) – and I don’t think it works in this context with these songs. Kushner is too focused on his own voice to let the music do its magic. Certainly the new take is less appealing for audiences here in Japan, who aren’t as familiar with the details as portrayed here.

One big irritation is the extensive Spanish used in many of the scenes, though fortunately, unlike the US, those were subtitled in Tokyo. I get it that the characters would be speaking Spanish among themselves in real life, making this more “realistic”, but it’s impossible to get to know these characters if we can’t understand them. Think they’ll release this in Latin America without subtitling the English? (Answer: Are you kidding?) As I noted elsewhere:

Note to producers: the characters in US productions of The King & I don’t speak Thai, those in Fiddler don’t speak Russian or Yiddish, and those in The Lion King don’t speak animal language. (Nor, for that matter, do characters in Japanese productions of My Fair Lady speak English.) We accept as a convention that characters are speaking a different language even as we hear English voices. A musical is not where you go for realism.

We also miss some key dialogue, such as when Anita calls Rita Moreno a “traitor” in Spanish – a pretty important point, I think. The writer does his best to have it both ways in many scenes by having Anita break in and insist that everyone switch to English to better assimilate in the US. Lame. (The same excuse was used in the Baryshnikov vehicle White Nights in his scenes with a fellow Russian – well, Helen Mirren playing a Russian – where he refuses to speak the language of the country he abandoned, thus allowing him to continue in English.)

The whole concept pretty much falls apart anyway when you have the songs all in English, that is, they speak to each other in Spanish but sing to each other in English, which makes no sense at all. Having the characters speak in two different voices actually takes us out of the moment, the reverse of what the creators were hoping to accomplish. The inclusion of Spanish to this extent was a silly and unnecessary conceit, and worked here no better than in the Broadway revival of some years back, directed by Laurents no less, where it was quickly abandoned when audiences complained.

Being the 2020s – the production, not the story – the film comes complete with a transgender character, here taken by Anybodys, originally a tomboy who wants to join the guys and in this version a post-female. This is one powerful ex-girl: the character pounds the living daylights out of a fellow Jet when insulted by him, then beats and kicks two policemen with impressive force when they try to intervene. That didn’t strike me as particularly credible; a more likely scenario for the times would have had the Jets beat the crap out of a male pretender like this (isn’t that what we’re supposed to believe about transgender persecution?). But what do I know? This gender switch added nothing whatsoever to the material and suggested an entirely different period than the setting of the film (not to mention depriving female candidates of a nice role). It was the most irritating part of the film hands down.

There were several minor translation issues that should have been caught before they reached the screen. The taunting “I don’t speak Spic” was rendered simply as “I don’t speak Spanish”, which changes the tone considerably; “I have a love” was “I have love”; “You forget I’m in America” was “We live in America”. As noted, the Spanish was translated as well as the English, so at least that was an improvement over the US release, assuming of course that the translations were correct.

The main couple had beautiful singing voices but little chemistry. It was nice of the filmmakers to get an Hispanic actress for Maria (though apparently of Columbian rather than Puerto Rican ethnicity), but I wish they had found someone with more natural star quality. On the plus side, Anita was fantastic in a showy role, making the role entirely her own; Bernardo and Riff were notably strong; and Chino, practically a nonentity before, was a smart addition nicely played. It was great seeing ninety-year-old Moreno, the original film’s Anita, in the new role of Doc’s widow, though the attempt to make her a symbol of sorts as the Hispanic widow of a white guy was lumbering. Giving her “Somewhere” was a lovely idea only because of the nice symmetry with the first film; the line “there’s a place for us” doesn’t sound as powerful coming from an old lady than from the kids themselves. It also deprives us of the beautiful ballet where the idea is expressed more abstractly and of an important coda at the end when the tragedy has played out.

For all its casting issues and stage-bound direction, the old film, which more or less follows the stage show, indisputably reigns in terms of a more universal message. I still think the best idea for a new film version would be one of the NBC Live musicals, which would preserve the dances in real time and capture the electricity of live performance, assuming a choreographer who understands musical dance and a director patient enough to capture that without endless editing. Spielberg’s version is pretty much as feared. I just hope it inspires audiences to catch the old film to see what they’re missing.