For even more thoughts from myself upon this musical remake then you can simply click over to our YouTube to see me and previous and future guest Rhian Holmes discuss the film in our longest episode yet; https://youtu.be/8n0yHQQzmTA. Enjoy.

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There’s an interesting hypocrisy around what and what is not sacred within the core text and the film-making decisions behind West Side Story, this 2021 remake of the classic film and of course another adaptation of the original musical. Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have chosen to make a West Side Story for today, whilst still keeping its 50’s setting. They have chosen to make this a film about struggle over a land already set for demolition. Choices like these are plentiful and make this remake a worthy adaptation that fuels the original masterpiece with a new vital criticism, however there is a further hypocrisy within the other artistic choices. There is a sacredness with Leonard Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics that isn’t touched, and yet the similarly sacred to myself book by Arthur Laurents and choreography of Jerome Robbins is all but entirely done away with. Kushner and Spielberg make dynamic decisions in depictions of those minority groups that are presented in the original text but hardly elevated above surface level represtation. Here time is taken and characters are fleshed out, however with this there is a level of anachronism that takes me out of the story, albeit a level of anachronism that allows for intriguing representation. Again a level of hypocrisy, but that’s really not the right word is it? Instead I’d like to refer to these collisions of decisions as an intriguing grey area instead, where interpretation, investigation, adaptation, re-imagining and re-interpretation all collide and reside, that makes West Side Story (2021) as valid a piece of art as any other adaptation. Heading into the film I perhaps shamefully already had my soundbite ready; presuming that it would indeed be “rather great, but irrefutably pointless” – I can’t say after seeing the film that that is wholly untrue, but this film certainly does make a passionate series of statements and enough powerfully effective re-imaginings of numbers and scenes to make this a worthy remake.

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I feel its redundant for me to comment on how extraordinary, still full of life and power and perfection the music, lyrics and story of West Side Story are, so instead let’s discuss the direction and performances of this film specifically. Spielberg has an incredibly visual flare that is at its best in long-takes and extended sequences, which of course pairs him perfectly to the world of musical theatre, and even from the dynamic musically-specific editing of Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar in the opening prologue we find that we are in safe hands here. Not we ever had to really doubt such a thing of course. Then the safe hands begin to multiply as we find our ensemble of cast and characters begin to be introduced, again in my podcast review I go into detail on each performance, but here I will discuss our biggest standouts and our one desperate weak link. Let’s start there in fact, with Ansel Elgort as Tony who from the off I found to be un-interesting and deeply un-believable in both his most romantic scenes and later on his scenes of greatest anguish. This is only further affected by the fact that he is surrounded on all sides by triple threat performers of incredible calibre. Rachel Ziegler delivers a Maria that is tragically full of life, vigour and of course love and passion, musically is certainly where Ziegler excels however, over her acting scenes which aren’t bad in the slightest, but aren’t as truly astounding as her singing performances. On the other end of this spectrum we find Ariana DeBose as Anita, one of the greatest roles in all of musical theatre, that is here delivered to the nines. DeBose gives us everything and is one of the best triple-threat musical film performances I’ve seen in a very long time. Rita Moreno too, returning in a revitalised version of the role of Doc, offers us a painful pathos and beautiful haunting quality in every beautiful word she delivers. Finally I feel I must comment that although comparison is sometimes a fruitless form of criticism, I feel it must be mentioned that when I do purchase my blu-ray of the film (which I will do) and file it alphabetically into my collection (which, yes, I do), I can’t find a time when I am choosing a film to watch that I will ever look at my two West Side Story blu-rays and select this one to watch. I feel there we find the fundamental truth for this reviewer in his previous comment that the film could be possibly “pointless”.

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Ultimately for me this 2021 film ends up around the 8/10 mark. In a vacuum this is of course one of the very best films you will ever see, but this is not in a vacuum, nor does it want to be. It is a film that openly acknowledges, challenges, reinterprets or dynamically adapts concepts and plotting from the original musical and the original film. For me many of these changes were effective, but overall left a lot to be desired when it came to landing the emotion and power of the ending. This is the story of Romeo & Juliet and if one begins to question and analyse decisions made in that story then you will struggle to believe a lot of what goes on. This can all be forgiven in how the original musical and original film for that matter depicts itself, with a slight fairytale aesthetic, but with this film repeatedly focussing on the brutal realities of the world it’s depicting, it leads one to question more than feel. Spielberg has made an excellent film with Kushner’s intriguing analytical adaptation, bolstered by an ensemble of mostly stellar performances, that can’t help but feel at the end of the day a little unsatisfying.

P.S As I opened with, for more thoughts and deeper discussion about all matters surrounding the film, then please head over to the Youtube at this link; https://youtu.be/8n0yHQQzmTA, or find the show wherever you find podcasts.

-          Thomas Carruthers