There are many reasons to be wary of the new "West Side Story" but Steven Spielberg's glorious reimagining eliminates all of them.
Opening with immigrant neighborhoods in Manhattan being demolished to build Lincoln Center in the late 1950s and proceeding to a gang encounter with a casually racist police officer, this "West Side Story" immediately establishes a gritty backdrop that the first version downplayed. Then, we're at the "Dance at the Gym" sequence, a highlight of the Oscar-winning original. It establishes that Spielberg knows how to showcase dance as well as something he's never been great at: romance.
The first meeting of Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) is both intimate and epic. They see each other across a crowded room but Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński make it feel like they're the only people there.
Fans of the first movie and of the play, with music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, will find much of what they loved in this new version. "America" is still splashy, funny and colorful. The Puerto Rican characters still conveniently wear warm colors while the others wear cool, so we can keep them straight. Dance remains an important form of communication, if not quite as much as in the original. Tony, whose heritage is Polish, and Maria, whose family is from Puerto Rico, still love each other despite backlash and prejudices from their feuding communities.
But a lot is new. This "West Side Story" achieves diversity through casting, not cosmetics. All of its actors actually sing, which was not true in 1961. The Spanish speakers actually speak (unsubtitled) Spanish. Anybodys, vaguely a tomboy in the original, now seems to be nonbinary — as is Iris Menas, whose performance as the gang wannabe adds a provocative wrinkle to a story in which toxic masculinity is the real villain and the voices of reason are all female. Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar as the 1961 Anita, is still around, but now she's the Doc character, who counsels Tony.
The fact that his counselor is Puerto Rican emphasizes the foolish bigotry in "West Side Story" and Moreno's character, named Valentina, is more prominent than Doc was. Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner make her the movie's conscience. The widow of a white man, she's part of multiple communities and she dreams of a West Side where people recognize there is more that unites them than separates them.
All of the changes make this "West Side Story" urgent. It's still a vibrant and entertaining musical but it has more to say than the original and, as a result, it hits harder.
Elgort, whose clear, strong tenor has a conversational quality, is an almost ideal Tony. Zegler, a newcomer, also has a great voice and the depth to convey the conflicting emotions of someone who loves the man who (spoiler alert, if you've never seen the show or "Romeo and Juliet") kills her brother. Despite the intimidation factor of appearing with the woman who won an Oscar for her role, Ariana DeBose is distinctive and passionate as Maria's friend Anita.
"West Side Story" is Spielberg's first musical but it's solidly in his comfort zone. Unlike, say, "Dear Evan Hansen," Spielberg embraces the idea of filming a stage musical, even turning a playground into a stage for a dramatic — and very theatrical — lighting shift when Tony sings "Maria."
This "West Side Story" is not, as many movie musicals are, one that is embarrassed about the idea of people who suddenly dance or break into song. It celebrates those things. It loves those things. And it knows we love them, too.
'West Side Story'
***1/2 out of 4 stars
Rated: PG-13 for language, violence and smoking.
Where: In area theaters.
