West Side Story (2021)
Review of West Side Story (2021), directed by Steven Spielberg
Coming into watching this movie at a theater, I already had mixed feelings about seeing West Side Story come to life on the big screen yet again. Not even two years ago I saw West Side Story as it was revived on Broadway for my college’s honors program, and I remember a girl in the program said she emailed our professor about how her cousin was one of the girls sexually assaulted by one of the main actors in the cast. I really liked the music of it, but as I stood up to clap, I noticed not many people were standing up and clapping with me. There were mixed reactions to a story that seemed like a quote-on-quote classic, and so I took it up upon me to do my research. It’s what I do best.
I always get scared seeing movies in theaters, especially with the new COVID-19 surge happening in the United States, so I sighed with dread when I saw my theater was almost fully booked. I have A List for AMC so I book whenever I feel like it and as early as possible, so I almost always get the seat that I want in there. And it’s obvious this was a movie for people who hadn’t been to the movies for awhile because my God, I thought I was surrounded by idiots. This one group was yelling to talk to each other during the movies, people were hacking without masks or covering their mouths, and I was surrounded by people on their phones who’d look up sporadically at the screen.
At the end of the day, my feelings about the movie were mixed. Let’s dive into this review.
West Side Story is an updated Romeo and Juliet with an interracial love and gang wars going on because of them.
Maria has just moved to New York City from Puerto Rico; in this edition, she is played by newcomer Rachel Zegler, who, to be honest, stole the show for me. Zegler had never acted before this movie and she was absolutely incredible as Maria—I don’t know much about Lantinx accent but I thought she did a decent job. Someone feel free to correct me if I’m making an absolutely terrible assumption here.
West Side Story takes placed in 1957 and deals with the conflict of two rival gangs. They live in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City that’s being demolished to make rich-people apartments and what is now Lincoln Center. However, back in the day, this was called San Juan Hill because of the large number of Afro-Caribbean people, Black Americans, and Puerto Ricans who lived in the area. In the movie, the turf movie extends due to racist reasons.
The Jets are a group of young white boys who know only misery; their parents are addicts and alcoholics, thus these boys learned to grow up by being street rats. Tony, our male protagonist, used to be one of the Jets. But after he is sent to jail for almost killing someone (I had the implication that it was a Puerto Rican), he’s learning to change his ways and tries to break off from the leader of the Jets, Riff. I recognized the guy who played Riff immediately because of he was in Dear Evan Hansen as Connor Murphy, the kid who killed himself.
Maria is the sister of the leader of the Sharks, Bernardo. She lives with Bernardo and his girlfriend Anita in a rather-large NYC apartment (I was impressed, to be honest, at the size of it) and has just come from Puerto Rico for a better life. There’s some changes in the new version of the movie of how Puerto Rico is depicted; something that always shocked me about the musical was how Puerto Rico was depicted as a hellhole that was dirty and full of non-opportunity.
Anita and her girls in “America” represent the optimisim that these immigrants have coming to the mainland, while Bernardo doesn’t seem to believe in the American Dream. Anita is given more context in this version because she admits how she wants to open up a sewing shop of her own, which is something I liked. In the original, Anita just kind of exists, but here we come to learn and love her a little bit more.
Then we have the classic dance scene between the rival gangs, where Maria and Tony meet behind the bleachers. They move awfully fast by kissing before knowing each other’s names, which is good for them I guess. Then Tony just wanders the neighborhood belting out Maria until the right one just happens to show up.
There were these pockets of humor in the movie that the audience really appreciated; lots of laughs in this theater. Then we progress through the story to the Romeo and Juliet aspects of it, which West Side Story subverts because Maria lives. Tony thinks she had died and sacrifices himself to Chino, but this is the key to ending the feud. Maria’s monologue at the very end is why we’re able to see the moment of unification. She shows us and the gangs why we learn to hate as she swings the gun around saying she wants to murder every single one of them for what they’ve taken from her.
This new edition does justice by not having actors in brownface like the original, but there’s still so much more that could be done. West Side Story doesn’t feel like an authentic story because it wasn’t written by Puerto Ricans. It was written completely by white men and at the end of the day, even its cast is largely non-Puerto Rican.
Zegler herself is half-white and half-Columbian; while she is a good find, a treasure we’re going to love from now on, she still isn’t Puerto Rican. But that’s not the core problem. The core problem is that we need to have more Puerto Rican-led stories rather than rehashing a movie that never had good connotations of these people. I’d prefer to see a new film about San Juan Hill rather than West Side Story.
Ansel Elgort is also the weakest link here. He’s good at dancing and acting, pulls off his comedic moments well, but he should never have been Tony. If this wasn’t a musical I’d probably be fine with him, but his version of “Maria” just didn’t hit right for me. Would’ve preferred a newcomer like Zegler in the lead role.
My final thought is I did think the movie was visually gorgeous. From the dresses swirling on screen to the streets of New York, I thought that it was such an appetizing movie. While it does have its problems, it still was pretty. Like that scene where Maria is on the fire escape and Tony just climbs up it? Visually stunning set. Absolutely loved the blocking and set design on that one.
Overall Thoughts
Don’t see it in theaters, especially with the new COVID strain out. I think this is one you can solidly skip unless you want to see the visuals on a big screen or if you want IMAX music. It’s an okay movie, but I think it cashes in on the nostalgia factor for the older crowd a bit more than being fresh or new. I didn’t really feel anything by the end of it, and while I usually like to know the story beforehand, I didn’t feel like this was groundbreaking to me. It felt like something I’d seen before at the end of the day. I will keep an eye out for Rachel Zegler though—supposedly she’s going to be Snow White in the next Disney live-action film.
