12/10/2021 – PG-13 – 2h 36m

Alan: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✩
Michelle: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is West Side Story, a classic Broadway musical presented faithfully by Steven Spielberg.

Alan: This is a musical in the style of classic musicals from the 1950’s and 60’s, but with modern production quality. I was very much reminded of the 1955 film adaptation of Guys and Dolls. The sets and backdrops of 1957’s New York City are gorgeous, and while you are aware they aren’t quite real, they don’t come off as stage sets. Much of the background is graded with an almost sepia color while the characters are usually costumed brightly and full of life. It is a beautiful effect that walks a fine line between realism and the artificiality of a choreographed stage production.

Michelle: I love watching professionals sing and perform complex dances in musicals. West Side Story has top notch singing, dancing, cinematography and music, but the joy and jubilation is missing with the ensemble performance that makes the movie feel really mechanical and dull.

Alan: Music is a shortcut to our souls and heightens feelings of joy and despair that we often seek in stories. Every motion felt precise and planned both in dancing and in action — all executed like clockwork. It was beautiful to watch. There were many very interesting shots with interplay of light and shadow, but I think I agree that it felt almost too mechanical. I may have had trouble connecting emotionally because of its clockwork nature.

Michelle: I just couldn’t get the jaunty, happy-go-lucky feelings like those I would get as a kid watching old musicals on TV. Usually I love soundtracks, but this music was nothing exciting or moving; I don’t know why other than to say it felt dry and disconnected, like a marching track lumbering forward.

Alan: West Side Story has never been my favorite musical. The songs often revolve around fighting and the discordant harmonies and staccato rhythms don’t appeal to me personally in the same way that the anthems from Les Misérables do. The story covers an important aspect of American history, but I’ve never wanted to listen to the soundtrack on repeat. That isn’t this adaptation’s fault. I think you know what you are walking into when you see the title West Side Story.

Michelle: I know there was talk about this movie not being updated enough for the current day, but I feel a story should be told based on the morals and attitudes of the time it was originally written. The audience can differentiate from racism of the past and current values. When Indiana Jones fights Nazis, we don’t need to be taught why the Nazis are bad. 

Tony doesn’t want to fight; he wants to get away from the gang rivalries that have already caused him so much trouble. He is downtrodden and slouched over after spending a year in prison. Tony is not a charismatic, happy-go-lucky leading man, but a man changed and working to be better. The puppets around him want to keep fighting and follow the same script that they’ve always followed. Tony gets pulled into the fight even as he tries to escape the story that both gangs keep following.

Neither gang is on the right side. They are both groups of puppets going along dancing, singing, fighting to the machine’s tribal script without any jubilation. Everything is under shadows trudging along to inescapable marching music.

Alan: Spielberg presented aspects of good and evil that I’d never picked up before in this story. I had always seen Officer Kumpke through the eyes of the youth — a bully authority figure who was picking on kids whom he perceived as “bad”. This adaptation showed the police as a peacekeeping force whose main goal was to keep kids from killing each other.

Michelle: The characters go through the motions of the script like cogs in the machine. Nothing is original or happy in their dancing, singing, fighting, with the exception of the young Maria who has a bit of hope for the future.

Maria and Tony try to escape the script. But the violent drama brought on by their friends and family who are blindly following the old script of racist fighting tribalism drown Maria and Tony’s chance at escape and happiness.

Alan: Since we are discussing the core of West Side Story, it is probably worth pointing out that it is itself a modernization of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I know the ending to that story well. Everyone knows that ending well. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the inevitable outcome throughout the movie. 

Michelle: Yes, West Side Story is a Romeo and Juliet tragedy, and one shouldn’t go into it expecting a buoyant love story with the accompanying music and dancing.  At first I was disappointed in the mechanical feeling the musical had and was ready to give West Side Story a one star rating because of the missing joy. But, after thinking through the story, I realized that West Side Story is not a happy romp into the idyllic 1950s full of happy, dancing people, but a tragedy of average, good people following the script of racist fighting against other average, good people with tragic consequences. The music, dancing, and acting from the first scenes are setting up the inevitable devastating end.

Alan: I kept seeing the folly of youth and the mechanical progression towards the tragic outcome. Maybe that was part of the artistic goal: a reminder of the guaranteed result that comes from hatred and racism. Knowing that, maybe I wasn’t able to let myself become emotionally invested in the characters

Michelle: Spielberg uses light beautifully to communicate his themes. Most of the shots are in moody, dusky shadows except for Maria who is glowing with youthful hope, beauty and joy. Tony is the downtrodden, sad, shadowy ex-convict trying to find joy in love while fitting in with his old friends. He fails to find the light and remains stuck in the dusky shadows of San Juan Hill. 

West Side Story is a tragic story told skillfully by the director Spielberg using all the tools of a filmed musical: cinematography, set design, costumes, acting, dancing, singing, score. The tragic ending is inevitable since the puppets followed the script through the end killing the spark of hope and joy that Maria had started to bring to Tony’s life. No one escapes the puppetmaster if they are unwilling to create their own script that breaks away from old tropes and hatreds.

Five stars.

Alan: This was a beautiful adaptation. Spielberg is a master. I would probably enjoy a semester-long class covering the film theory in this feature. It will probably be an example in film studies for decades to come. The idea of connecting to it intellectually is exciting to me, but as entertainment I just didn’t connect to it emotionally. For that reason, I give it four stars.