Steven Spielberg takes less than a minute to encapsulate the central conflict of his latest release, West Side Story. The camera glides over the fence of a property under construction. A board on it reads “Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts”. Another board indicates that it’s an urban renewal project; inner-city New York is gearing for gentrification. Beyond the rubbles emerge a group of young pauper Americans, who were “born here” — now the embodiment of an eyesore in a glittering modern world. A crucial part of West Side Story is tied to this tension, to an eternal fight or, as a character says later, the “fight about territory”.
But those Americans, or “the last of the can’t-make-it-Caucasians”, are of course not fighting the establishment — they cannot. Like many marginalised hopefuls, they’ve found an easy target, people much like them, poor, trapped, discontent: the Puerto Ricans, the “spics” who “don’t belong”. And at the centre of this strife are two young hearts, Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler), belonging to rival gangs, who have fallen for each other. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it — it should, for the original 1957 Broadway production was inspired by Romeo and Juliet and then turned into a famous film by Robert Wise in 1961 which won 10 Oscars including Best Picture. Closer home, the renowned play has found echoes in numerous Bollywood films, ranging from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak to Josh to Ishaqzaade.
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Spielberg doesn’t alter the foundational material — star-crossed lovers, embattled lands, people-turned-possessions — it’s all in there. His clutter-free, quasi-novelistic approach gives West Side Story impressive clarity and simplicity. The first 45 minutes almost unfold as distinct chapters: the first segment introduces the white Americans (the Jets); the second revolves around the Puerto Ricans (the Sharks). We then meet Tony and Maria — the former, an erstwhile Jets member out on parole, wanting to lead a clean life; the latter, an 18-year-old janitor in an upscale New York store, feeling nervous about an imminent dance event — and the final segment, tying everything together, is the communal dance itself, meant to promote harmony between the Jets and Sharks, where Tony and Maria meet for the first time.
Even though West Side Story spotlights a grim world — of urban displacement and discontent, of petty one-upmanship and fatal fights — its form, a musical, allows Spielberg to maintain a playful tone. It retains Leonard Bernstein’s original score; the numbers enliven the movie, enveloping it in a warm comforter of arresting rhythm. The spirit of music extends beyond the songs: It is evident in the way the camera dances around the characters, sweeps the streets, swoops down on them; it is evident in the momentum-escalating cuts making them zip on New York streets, using the open settings in all their expanse, charging the characters’ desires — especially Puerto Ricans’ — with palpable curiosity and wonder.
If you, like me, were unaware of the soundtrack (unlike the gentleman next to me who hummed two songs — a mini-live performance), you’d enjoy fascinating discoveries. Take the number America, for instance, sung by the Puerto Ricans, which accomplishes several key things: It reveals character, reflects motifs, pops contradictions. Framed as a conversation between the two Sharks — Maria’s brother, Bernardo (David Alvarez), and his live-in partner, Anita (Ariana DeBose) — it presents one country but two distinct viewpoints (“Industry boom in America/twelve in a room in America”, “I’ll get a terrace apartment/better get rid of your accent”, “life is all right in America/if you’re all-white in America”).
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The Broadway piece was released during the civil rights movement — ditto its first Hollywood adaptation — but even six decades later, even with all the old school charm and sentimentality intact, the Spielberg film feels pertinent. If the Jets crave literal father figures — growing up in hovels, raised by poor single mothers, with limited scope for upward social mobility — then the Sharks, leaving their families and travelling thousands of miles to a new Promised Land, also hope for a similar assurance, that the country of immigrants (and its people) will welcome and support them. Both the Jets and the Sharks are orphans, wanting to cling to a sense of purpose and identity.
Spielberg’s light touch functions as a reliable anchor balancing several opposing forces. The performances are on-point — especially the debutant Zegler, a credible portrait of young innocence and aspiration — matching the musical’s delicate tonal variations. At a runtime of 158 minutes, West Side Story only intermittently feels flabby. Its third act could have been tighter, and the first-half of the song A Boy Like That is a rare misfire, where the poetry of the composition struggles to complement a sombre plot turn. But what remains with you long after is the film’s rhythm — primarily its expressions of abandon on New York streets. Those scenes capture the movie in all-encompassing detail — rolling in characters’ desires and despairs, aspirations and confusions — framing the land claimed by all, the land belonging to none: the streets make them live, the streets make them die.
This review was first published on The Wire.