I just saw Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story.
Spoiler: Tony still dies at the end.
The new Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) are excellent singers, and have fine chemistry together. But...while she was not a Latina, I preferred the tender innocence of Natalie Wood’s Maria to the feisty edge of Zegler's (who isn't Puerto Rican either.) Anita needs to be the fierce one, not Maria! From that point of view, the fact that Zegler's Maria was attracted to Tony makes no sense whatsoever. Spielberg couldn't seem to figure out whether to make Maria aggressive or gentle, and in my view failed on both accounts. While the actress probably did as directed, and did a fine job, she just didn't have the depth and subtlety that Natalie Wood gave to the part. She seemed, as an actor, immature, although they will possibly give her an Oscar anyway.
I'm sorry to say this, but the Tonys in BOTH the original and the remake were seriously wimpy and neither one rang true for me as brutal-bad-boys-turned-good.
One of the worst mistakes of the remake was the way in which the songs were shuffled. This completely ruined the flow and the building intensity that Bernstein's score had deliberately enhanced. The very worst of these poor decisions was having Maria sing I Feel Pretty right after the big gang fight. I think I may have an understanding of why Tony Kushner, who wrote the remake, tried that, but wow, it did not work!
The new Anita, Ariana De Bose, is certainly talented, yet she just did not show the fire and spit and emotional range that Rita Moreno did. Perhaps this was due to the direction she was receiving. Of the two females in the remake, they depicted Maria as the more brittle one, and Anita was turned into a kind of passive housewife to Bernardo, where in the original, both Bernardo and Anita were an even match of fire! There simply was not the desired and exciting contrast between the two that Rita Moreno and Natalie Wood had.
The worst casting was of the gangs and gang leaders–all were seriously disappointing. I did not feel any sense of menace whatsoever from either the new Riff (Mike Faist) or the new Bernardo (David Alvarez), and there was none whatsoever from the gang members. Mike Faist in particular was unable to project a sense of power or authority; I kept waiting to see that, but it never occured. I simply couldn’t accept him as any kind of leader. Of course, Russ Tamblyn was also kind of ridiculous as a gang leader, but he did have size in his favor.
In the original film, George Chakiris was SO mean and scary as Bernardo, and used his body language wonderfully to convey that meanness (as did the other gang members in the original film). His Academy Award was well deserved. I love his singing, and have several of his albums; amazing that the former angry Bernardo also has crooned tender Gershwin love songs with the best, which shows his versatility.
The original Chino (Jose de Vega) was really scary. Why in the remake they cast a bespectacled Matt Damon look-alike in the role is beyond me. Even weirder, the new script portrays Bernardo, who is supposed to be a vicious leader, affectionally befriending this meek accounting student. C'mon! I guess they were trying to go against type, but it didn’t cut the mustard for me.
I was also disappointed in the casting of Anybodys in the remake, where, guess what? They cast yet another
dark-haired person having the same general build as most of the male gang members; it was not even immediately evident that she was female, which meant the loss of an interesting element. The new character was dull and not very expressive, perhaps directed to be that way, and lacked the
interesting jumpy, wiry, needy vibrancy of Susan Oakes in the original.
Apart from ineffective casting, the film was shot in such a dusty, dim, smudgy way that it was hard to see anything clearly. Not only was there a lack of contrast between characters; that lack of contrast was evident even in the picture itself. Yes, I understand that Spielberg wanted to show it as a gritty urban atmosphere, but sadly, he succeeded too well. This new version of West Side Story was so visually depressing and gray that the intensity of the high drama was completely lost.
This choice in filming in the new version made it difficult to make out the faces or even actions of the gang members, which were strikingly memorable and clear in the original. It was also nearly impossible to make out the difference between the Jets and the Sharks. They were for the most part of similar heights and builds. (Check out cast photos, which I do not have permission to reprint here.) I found it puzzling that most of the Jets in the remake appeared to have hair as dark as the Puerto Ricans. I didn't notice any blondes among the new Jets, but then everything was
so dimly lit and fast moving that it was hard to tell; there might have
been. In the original, the majority of the Jets had light hair and were of all different shapes, sizes, and facial types. It was a fantastic contrast in a story about worlds colliding. Maybe Spielberg wanted to lose that contrast for some symbolic reason, but it didn’t work.
The camera just moved far too fast most of the time, seldom lingering long enough for the viewer to get a clear idea of what was happening (except in the love scenes), and almost never zeroing in on the faces of the gang members. In both gangs, the actors seemed lackluster and not at all distinct either from one another or between the two gangs the way they were in the original which–granted–focused much more on the Jets than the Sharks. None of the new gang members stood out the way Tucker Smith (Ice) or Tony Mordente (Action) or de Vega as Chino stood out. The energy was flat.
In the fight scene, including the preparation for the fight, it was frequently impossible to make out what was going on–as stated, it was visually murky, and there were too many cuts before the eye could absorb the scene. I found this disappointing. Throughout the film, whether Jets or Sharks, the actors portraying the gang members did not project any particular hardness or nastiness, but actually the opposite! In most of the scenes, it just looked like a bunch of passive, not-very-expressive bored guys hanging out together. In the original, the gang members were meaner, funnier (in Officer Krupke) and more distinctive.
Compared to the amazing John Astin, the original emcee at the dance, or the meanness of John Bramley, who played the hard-bitten cop, the actors playing those roles in the remake, like much of the rest of the cast, fell flat.
And oh my, the singing! In the new version, while Tony and Maria and Anita were good singers, the singing of the gangs was really, really, really weak. Why did they not dub in more potent singers? With the combination of all these factors, the Tonight montage was absolutely amazing in the original film, and pathetic in the remake.
Even the dance numbers were murky and dull without the deep, delicious, lingering shots of the original. I am glad that they stuck to Jerome Robbin's interpretations, but even then, the dances in the gym or on the streets were nowhere as powerful and raw in the remake as in the original.
Spielberg is amazing, I admire him tremendously...but sadly, he stepped out of his expertise in this remake of West Side Story. I don't think he has much, if any, musical sense. That said, the orchestra was great, and I was happy to see that Gustavo Dudamel, a favorite of mine, was the conductor. With such weak singing from the larger cast, though, even Dudamel could not charge the brilliant music enough to bring it to life.
Let's look at the new script. Almost all of the changes to the original story were contrived and awkward. It wasn't necessary, for instance, to change the Puerto Rican women's workspace from a dressmaker's shop to a department store, and it was utterly absurd to insert the idea that Tony, who had almost killed someone, was entranced by an art museum on his bus ride to prison. What?! Changing the owner of the drugstore from Doc to Doc's widow was the only alteration that worked.
And speaking about that, in the entire remake of the film, I most enjoyed Rita Moreno, who was by far the best actor of any of the characters, male or female! Hers was a superior performance!
I do recognize that some of my disappointment stems from the fact that when I saw the original movie in 1962, I was 15 and extremely impressionable. The film, for its time, was risky and groundbreaking stuff, even though people take issue with it today. For instance, it was the very first time in a major movie where it was implied that teenagers slept together without disastrous consequences or punishment. Of course, Tony DID get killed, so…hmm.
