“West Side Story” - Film Review
Musicals are a bit out of this world. After all, accepting that people will randomly break into song and dance takes a certain suspension of disbelief. Carefully choreographed dancers twirl in and out of frame. Simple acts like tying your shoes or making the bed are now flourishes, punctuated with musical flares. From the opening notes, there’s an excitement brewing. How will this story dazzle us? Because isn’t that why we watch musicals? For the otherworldly excitement that comes with singing and dancing?
Steven Spielberg’s revived West Side Story tells the story of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the backdrop of New York City in the 1950s. Instead of the Capulets and the Montagues, there are the Jets and the Sharks. The Jets are white, mostly Polish, and the Sharks are Puerto Rican. They’re rival gangs fighting over the Upper West Side of New York City. One of the leaders of the Jets, Tony (Ansel Elgort), falls in love with Maria (Rachel Zegler), the sister of the Sharks leader. Their forbidden romance leads to even more unrest between the two gangs.
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It’s telling when the characters featured most prominently in the trailers are not Tony and Maria. Therein lies the blue whale in the room. Plain and simple, Ansel Elgort is completely miscast. His performance is jarring and so unfair to the rest of the movie and the performances. When you cast actors like Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Brian d’Arcy James, and Rita Moreno, who all have careers decorated with Tonys, Grammys, an Emmy, and countless other awards, the bar for talent is high. Newcomer Rachel Zegler gave a performance so grounded and well-rounded that you would not have guessed it was her first film role.
There are examples in previous movie musicals where actors were cast who were not on a Broadway level. In La La Land, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone look and sound good until the professional dancers and singers appear behind them. What carries Gosling and Stone is their charisma and liveliness when they aren’t singing or dancing. The audience is willing to go along for the ride because the rest of their performance is so charming. With Elgort in West Side Story, there’s nothing that keeps him afloat. His face is flat whether he’s fighting with the Sharks or falling in love with Maria. He is just simply there. There’s a total lack of connection to his surroundings or the actors he’s sharing the scene with. All of the momentum of the movie grinds to a jarring halt when he’s on the screen.
Going from the sensational, spirited group dancing numbers of “America” and “Gee, Officer Krupke” to the dull Tony/Maria duet “One Hand, One Heart” really accentuates this miscasting and the potential of what the movie could have been. Despite Zegler’s best efforts at creating chemistry between herself and Elgort, the dynamic of Tony and Maria is a weak point impossible to overlook. In scenes and songs (like “I Feel Pretty”) when Zegler is alone, she wholeheartedly sells the relationship. The audience believes that Maria is swept up and falling in love. Sadly, most of Zegler’s scenes are shared with Elgort, so the true depth of her performance isn’t realized.
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Aside from Elgort’s casting, Spielberg’s first attempt at directing a musical is occasionally a breathtaking feat. With plenty of wide shots, the audience actually gets to appreciate the talent of the dancers. David Alvarez, who plays Bernardo, was one of the youngest winners of a Tony Award (Billy Elliot), and he trained in the American Ballet Theatre. Watching him let loose and dance was thrilling. Because of his skills, Spielberg had the freedom to let Alvarez’s body be in full view as he danced. So often in musicals or action movies there’s a stunt or dancing double, so you don’t get to see the full picture. Or if you do, it’s from far away. It goes to show you the other end of the casting. Alvarez is glorious, bringing a coolness to Bernardo that felt so natural as if he’d been playing this role his entire life. When he shared the screen with Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita, it was impossible to look away. Their portrayals of Bernardo and Anita were electrifying. Their chemistry, their singing, their dancing; it was all magnificent. Riff (Mike Faist) and Alvarez’s simmering anger as rivals was beyond compelling. In a perfect world, they’ll be duking it out again on the Oscar stage for Best Supporting Actor.
Spielberg is known for directing action movies like Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park. At first glance, those movies have nothing in common with West Side Story, but they must have helped with shooting the large dance numbers. By keeping the camera fluid in the dance scenes, moving in and out and around the actors, the audience gets the sense that they’re experiencing a Broadway show from the stage. That’s the experience that movie adaptations of these large-scale musicals should be creating. It’s captivating and enveloping. However, when Spielberg falls on more basic close-ups on the actors’ faces, it’s limiting. When he does that, the audience loses the totality of the performance. Given their starting place on the stage, there’s a full-body, theatrical feeling in many of the actor’s performances. Taking away the full range of motion in a close-up is a disservice. Luckily, that’s a rare camera choice.
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A mostly faithful retelling of the original, this updated West Side Story should become a new standard for adaptations. The music, a great blend from the movie and orchestrations from the Broadway show, has never sounded better. The updated script from Tony Kushner gives the character, Anybodys, the explicitly transgender characterization that existed in early iterations of the show (but sadly doesn’t fully know what to do with his character). The new character of Valentina (Rita Moreno) is a wonderful way of giving Moreno a meaningful role in this revival. Her rendition of “Somewhere” (sung live at the time of filming) reminds you what a powerhouse performer she still is.
This film is a still (sadly) all-too-relevant story about how hatred infiltrates communities and the struggle to find a place to belong. West Side Story is about creating a home, however, you choose to define the word. Unfortunately, the miscasting of Tony brings down what could have been a near-perfect movie. His role is simply too large to be ignored and impossible to compare to his co-stars’ formidable, sublime performances.
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