'West Side Story' gets 21st-century reboot
December 9, 2021
Iconic Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg first listened to the "West Side Story" album when he was 10. He harbored the dream of (re)telling its story ever since.
The three-time Academy Award winner has helmed just about every film genre in his illustrious career, from rollicking action flicks like the "Indiana Jones" franchise and "Jurassic Park," to gripping dramas like "Schindler's List" and "Munich," spanning outer space ("E.T") to the deepest oceans ("Jaws").
Now, he can add "musical" to his already remarkable body of work.
His version of "West Side Story" is based on the original 1957 hit Broadway musical, adapted into a film in 1961 — works that have amassed two Tonys and 10 Academy Awards to date.
The musical was originally created by director-choreographer Jerome Robbins, composer Leonard Bernstein, playwright Arthur Laurents and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died last Friday aged 91.
For his 21st-century reboot of the story, Spielberg had actually worked with Sondheim, along with writer Tony Kushner.
Spotlight on xenophobia and prejudice
Beyond the childhood dream, there was another reason driving the director to pick up "West Side Story."
Even if it is set in 1950s New York, the classic tale about forbidden love and two feuding street gangs — a retelling of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" — has lost none of its social relevance today.
"This story is not only a product of its time, but that time has returned, and it's returned with a kind of social fury," Spielberg told Vanity Fair. "I really wanted to tell that Puerto Rican, Nuyorican experience of basically the migration to this country and the struggle to make a living, and to have children, and to battle against the obstacles of xenophobia and racial prejudice."
In Spielberg's version, Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler, a Latina of Colombian descent who beat 35,000 actresses from around the world for the role, play the doomed lovers Tony and Maria.
They fall in love at first sight, despite belonging to the opposing clans: the Puerto Rican Sharks, headed by Maria's brother Bernardo (David Alvarez), and the Caucasian Jets, run by Tony's best friend Riff (Mike Faist), who cannot fathom Tony's plans to quit the gang.
It also boasts electrifying song-and-dance sequences featuring some of the late Sondheim's most memorable songs, including "America," "I Feel Pretty" and the soaring "Somewhere" — an ode to a utopia where love and acceptance prevail.
No more brownface
In keeping with industry standards of representation and inclusivity, Spielberg also spent a year casting globally for Latino men and women to play the Sharks.
"That's a big part of our story. The characters say and do things in our movie that they didn't say or do onstage, or in the 1961 film. And we cast all Latinx actors for the Shark boys and the Shark girls," Spielberg said at the film's premiere in New York in November.
In fact, some reviewers have lauded Spielberg for using his privilege and position in Hollywood for righting the wrongs of previous versions of the musical, in which non-Latino actors donned brownface to play the Puerto Rican Sharks.
Even in the 1961 movie, Caucasian actors Natalie Wood and George Chakiris, who played Maria and her gang leader brother Bernardo respectively, wore heavy brownface makeup.
Speaking at the same premiere, Puerto Rico-born actor Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing Anita in the 1961 film and appears as Valentina in the 2021 version, expressed pride "that every single Latino character is portrayed by a Latino actor, and that is very important because we are authentically showing what it means to be Latin."
"The representation of Latino and Hispanic performers in Hollywood has a long way to go, but we are starting to change that. There are so many talented people among Latinos, and Jennifer Lopez isn't the only one. We are everywhere!"
The 89-year-old actress had previously commented on how "extremely dark" the makeup was for some of the actors in the 1961 film; Moreno herself had her skin tone darkened, which she likened to "putting mud on my face."
She had tried to explain to the makeup artist back then how Puerto Ricans have different skin tones given their ethnic diversity, only to be asked in return if she was a racist.
"I was so flabbergasted that I couldn't come back with an answer," she recalled in a 2017 episode of "In The Thick," a podcast on race, politics and culture.
Spielberg has also deliberately not subtitled the Spanish dialog in the film, as a nod to the significant Spanish-speaking community who call the US home.
Film ban because of transgender character
Amidst the overwhelmingly rave initial reviews, there's Oscar chatter swirling about the film.
However, it has also recently garnered media attention for reportedly being banned in six Gulf countries.
The 1961 film had featured a character called Anybodys, a teenage girl who was referred to back then as a "tomboy," who badly wanted to become a member of the Jets but was refused because of her gender.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, in Spielberg's version, Anybodys gets more screen time and David Saint, who is the executor of author Arthur Laurents' estate, confirmed that Anybodys "is a character who was a man born in a female's body. End of story."
Spielberg cast 31-year-old, non-binary actor Iris Menas, whose credits include the Broadway musical "Jagged Little Pill," inspired by the Alanis Morissette album of the same name.
This inclusion of a transgender character has resulted in the film being banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait refused to grant the film a distribution certificate; the other countries' film authorities had requested cuts, but Disney refused to censor the work.