West Side Story (2021)

Jack and I love musicals, we love period pieces, and we loved this adaptation/remake of the 1961 movie, based on the 1957 Broadway musical about star-crossed lovers from rival New York gangs. After watching it we listened to the other two soundtracks (some of the lyrics have been switched around) and I became even more impressed with the genius of composer Leonard Bernstein (oh, those duets!) as well as the voices of Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler as Tony and Maria. All of the singing, dancing, acting, choreography, sets, you name it, are first rate.

Since I'm just getting around to writing this three weeks after watching, I now know that Ariana deBose won the Oscar for Supporting Actress. The movie had six other Oscar nominations, as well as a raft of nods from other organizations. Rita Moreno, now 90, who played Anita (DeBose's part) in the 1961 version, plays a new character, the widow of the storekeeper Doc.

Steven Spielberg directs from Tony Kushner's screenplay, credited as an adaptation of Arthur Laurents' stage book. There's no mention of Ernest Lehman's 1961 screenplay, Jerome Robbins' contribution to the 1957 play, nor William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics and sadly died four days before this movie's premiere.

The actors playing Latinx characters in this 2021 version are all actually Latinx. They occasionally lapse into speaking Spanish, and Spielberg felt it was respectful not to subtitle the Spanish. However, the closed caption version, while subtitling the English, merely said "[Spanish]," which was cruel to us who rely on captions for all dialogue. 

There was an all-Spanish revival of West Side Story on Broadway from 2009-11.

The cinematography by Janusz Kaminski, costumes by Paul Tazewell and production design by Adam Stockhausen were all nominated and rate mentioning here.

Elgort was last blogged for Baby Driver, Spielberg for The Post, Kushner for Fences, Kaminski for The Judge, and Stockhausen for The French Dispatch.

Bernstein (1918-1990) had a storied career in composing, conducting, performing, and educating, with too many highlights to summarize here. My personal connection is that I sang in the choir of a production of Bernstein's Mass when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in the early 1970s. I have a closer degree of separation from Sondheim (1930-2021), because his younger half-brother Herb was in my brother's high school class in New York. Stephen Sondheim was a prolific composer and lyricist and many of his works have been made into movies.

Zegler makes her film debut but has been performing as Maria since high school (maybe five years ago) and has been cast as Snow in an upcoming live action version of Snow White. DeBose sang and danced in Hamilton on stage and screen, as well as The Prom and the series Schmigadoon!. Moreno's 164 credits include 780 episodes of The Electric Company (1971-77), five of Jane the Virgin (2015-19), and 46 of the Latinx remake of One Day at a Time (2017-20), as well as The King and I (1956), Carnal Knowledge (1971), and so many more. Tazewell designed the wardrobe for Harriet and Hamilton, among others.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences feel pretty good about this one, averaging 91 and 94%, respectively. We watched it on March 8 on HBO Max.