Review: Spielberg Goes for Differentiation Over Imitation With ‘West Side Story’
“There's a place for us … somewhere a place for us.”
On legacy alone, the new West Side Story was always going to draw comparisons to previous incarnations. The original 1957 musical is not only one of the most famed productions of all time, but its 1961 film adaptation is also one of the most successful on-screen musicals ever put to celluloid, boasting 10 Oscars, one of which is a Best Picture. To say the 2021 rendition was going to have a tough time differentiating itself might be an understatement, but if anyone is capable of pulling off a grand Hollywood musical, it’s Steven Spielberg.
Despite he has fifty-odd years of experience and thirty-two film oeuvre, not one of Spielberg’s films is a musical — though the opening of Temple of Doom might partially qualify. The acclaimed director has cited his desire to remake West Side Story since he first fell in love with it when he was ten. Now at seventy-four, coming from both a place of affection and with decades of experience, it seems like just as good a time as any for the director to take a go at it, and while his new adaptation doesn’t quite match the stature of the original, it is an admirable outing for Spielberg and a notable film in his late-stage career.
For those unfamiliar with the sixty-four year old production, or the centuries-old Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet that it was based on, West Side Story centers on two rival gangs engaging in a turf war in 1950s New York. The Jets are made up of second and third generation European immigrants who grew up poor and come from dysfunctional homes. The Sharks consist of Puerto Rican immigrants who have moved into the neighborhoods that white immigrants once occupied but who have since moved out of as they climbed the social ladder. Spurred by racial divides, the two gangs come in fierce conflict of one another, but over both of them is the city who is exercising eminent domain on their neighborhood — to build the famed Lincoln Center no less. The two gangs know that neither is long for the place they call home, so they agree on rumble to determine who will own the upper west side once and for all.
Caught in the middle of all this are Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler), two star-crossed lovers who come from these embattled communities. After a stint in jail for nearly beating someone to death, Tony swears off the Sharks in an effort to go straight. When the rumble emerges, he tries to diffuse the situation at the behest of Maria, but finds himself getting pulled into a conflict that threatens his love for Maria.
Spielberg has directed one remake before in his career, that being 2005’s War of the World. It was not only a time capsule of post-9/11 sentiments and an early signifier of the grit that was about to consume Hollywood, but it was also a clear delineation from the Cold War era, science-fiction original. The film exemplified differentiation over mimicry, and the same methodology used by Spielberg then is being deployed now with West Side Story.
The first immediate difference you’ll recognize are the visuals. Not that the two are mutually exclusive in either instance, but Robert Wise’s and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 film has a particular emphasis on color whereas Spielberg’s is fixated with light. The iconic use of Technicolor in the original painted a vibrant New York in vivid shades, often landing in surreal territory that accentuated the pervading optimism of the Hollywood musical. Spielberg is not averse to using color in his version — going in so far as to code the Jets as blue and the Sharks as red in their attire, and giving the film a desaturated color grading that veers into both cyan-blue and maple-orange— but the visual language is more often defined by shadows and light against our characters. Longtime Spielberg DP Janusz Kaminski shoots scenes with light sources aimed directly at the camera, creating high contrast images with lens flairs à la a J.J. Abrams movie. The sum effect nets a similar surreal impression like that of the original.
Additionally, Spielberg’s cinematic language provides a different feel to this production. Musical numbers are broken across more sequenced shots with notable use of mediums and close-ups. This mode is largely forgone in the original in favor of wide, cinemascope shots that highlighted both set design and Jerome Robbins’ theatrical choreography. In this regard, the original has a stage-play quality to it, whereas Spielberg’s a more cinematic feel. Spielberg knows how to draw the eye and convey motion, letting the camera and edits speak in ways the characters do not — seen notably in a fantastic opening crane shot across the rubble of a torn down neighborhood and a back and forth school dance between the Sharks and the Jets.
Narratively, there are no major deviations from the source material. The timeless message about hatred towards the collective other and the divisions it breeds is as timely now as it was when the play was written, an indicator of how attuned the original play was, or perhaps a measure of how little we’ve progressed here in America. Only small revisions are made, either refining West Side Story’s themes or accentuating its details. Chino’s background is modified to make his downfall more tragic. Doc is replaced with his wife Valentina, played by original cast member Rita Moreno, to add an extra contextual relationship for Tony. And the racial conflict pervading the turf war is given historical context against New York’s gentrification. Also, Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim’s lasting music is still here, albeit in a slightly reshuffled order than you might remember it.
Much of how I think about this film comes down to comparisons — the original did this, Spielberg did that, this is how they’re different. Given the prolific nature of the original film adaptation, it’s interesting how Spielberg makes deliberate changes that are his own instead of imitating the distinct qualities of the 1961 film. In that way, I appreciate this film as Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, though I must admit I prefer the original.
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