Blog 73: Contradictions

73. Contradictions: Spielberg’s “West Side Story”, reviewed by Florian

Steven Spielberg’s 2021 Christmas gift to his movie-going audience is a Young Adult version of the Bernstein-Robbins-Laurents-Sondheim West Side Story, which is said to have cost $100 million, before additional advertising and distribution costs. Spielberg may have felt that a new film of the 1957 musical modernization of Romeo and Juliet was needed for the typical teenagers and dating couples who comprise the movie audience these days, sensibilities raised on superhero spectacles. Spielberg has regularly, and lucratively, aimed his films toward this demographic. The entertainment he now presents has been outfitted with a politically correct screenplay written by Tony Kushner. In a monumental example of virtue-signaling, the script tries to make the Sharks’ urban youth gang of immigrant Puerto Ricans as interesting as the all-white racist Jets. We get to see Anita feed a breakfast of scrambled eggs to her boyfriend Bernardo, leader of the Sharks. Spielberg has tossed out the famed stage choreography of Jerome Robbins, much of which was used in the 1961 movie version, co-directed by Robbins and Robert Wise. The 2021 film’s dance sequences are provided by Justin Peck, whose attempted Robbins pastiche fails.

What might be pointed out is that the first act of the stage musical featured the Jets, and the second half became a drama focused on the two Sharks women, Maria and Anita, in traumatic reaction to the gangs’ deadly rumble. Any 2021 underlining about Puerto Rican culture comes across as so much self-congratulatory busywork, to allow Kushner and Spielberg the illusion that they have something to say that relates somehow to the original Story productions of stage and screen. The spine of Jerome Robbins’ stage direction has been retained in many Spielberg scenes, with the result that his original accomplishment guides this 2021 effort, even with the excision of his dances. Robbins had a genius for braiding his directorial rhythms with his choreographic forms. There is no equivalent imbrication between Spielberg and Peck in the new film.

West Side Story is a haunting work for many theatergoers and film fans. The prizewinning 1961 film adaptation was an international moneymaker. The musical has often been staged in high school productions over the decades, so that it is engrained in the bloodstreams of our theater-conscious youth. Perhaps the Bernstein score stays fresh because of its use of harmonic effects such as the tritone for the Jets and of vivid Latin rhythms for the Sharks. In a sense, West Side Story is the Swan Lake of our musical theater (rather like Show Boat once was) and its music and dance stay in the collective memory while other antique works fade. Certainly, Steven Spielberg appears to have been inspired to raise this ghost out of a personal fascination. The question is whether he has found a valid reason to justify his inspection of the inherited materials. Over the years, Robbins himself often recommended a new film version, expressing his hope at one point that the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci might undertake such a venture. Here in New York, we have endured the miscast 2009 Arthur Laurents revival on Broadway and the 2020 Ivo van Hove po-mo staging, which closed during the pandemic (see Blog 37, “Taking Notes”), never to return, please.

The narrative literalisms and calculated p.c. elements in the Kushner rewrite could not have less to do with the poetic realism which the original stage West Side Story employed. Poetic realism was a stylistic convention in the twentieth century and resulted in works such as Maxwell Anderson’s Winterset and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. French films are famous for cinematic equivalents in Le jour se lève and Les enfants du paradis. Luchino Visconti’s film White Nights is a good example of such stylization in Italian cinema. From the evidence of their new version of Story, it is clear that Spielberg and Kushner have not heard of this theatrical mode or, if they have, are unable to imagine using it in their work. At times, it can seem as though they wish to turn the American musical form into a police procedural. We find ourselves visiting a police station and a morgue.

Realism in the arts, thank goodness, comes in many forms, although Kushner seems obsessed with socially conscious varieties. Prioritizing social injustice themes in West Side Story automatically contradicts the work’s combinatory mechanism, an amalgam of menacing tone and romantic fantasy, the amoral and the mortal. Very Shakespearian. Those of us who still remember the details of Robbins’ stage direction for Story remain conscious of his ability to distill the point of each scene in clear images and actions and to produce a theatrical momentum that was described as “filmic” in 1957. This directorial fluidity and economy were sustained for a brisk ninety minutes over the first act. Some of this skill was visible in the 1961 film, where Robert Wise bowed before Robbins’ inspirations. It was doubtless the speed of narration that attracted Spielberg to his project of adaptation, but he has come up at length with feckless ornamentation and folk persiflage, eagerly assisted by his collaborators, Kushner and Peck.

One of the distinguishing aspects of Robbins’ Jets both in 1957 and in 1961 was the individualization of the gang members. The boys were racist in their ambition to remove the invading Sharks from their West Side turf. Each Jet member enjoyed being a racist in his own way. Each one stood out. It is said that Robbins asked for extra rehearsal time to achieve such individualizing characterizations on his stage, partially through demanding each performer invent a distinctive biography, a backstory, for the portrayed character. I understand that Kushner wrote his own version of such biographies before Spielberg’s filming commenced. A number of the 1961 film’s cast members were veterans of the original stage productions in New York and London. They knew their roles. Perhaps Spielberg didn’t have the necessary rehearsal time prior to filming. Or perhaps he was simply not interested in his Jets, in comparison to the incoming Sharks. The result is that the racist gang is portrayed not as individuals but as a collective. (Arthur Laurents tried something like this approach in the 2009 production which he directed: there the Jets became Mad Max zombies.) The somber subject of racism is thus reduced to a simplified ensemble effect in the 2021 film. Racism is contained, circumscribed, rather than dramatically particularized. It becomes a concept rather than a living condition to be confronted in all of its variety and multiplicity.

In the new Spielberg adaptation, I found it to be visually difficult to distinguish members of the Jets’ gang. (I searched for Harrison Coll of New York City Ballet. Ah, yes, he’s somewhat visible in the rape scene.) The Jets loom. They are dressed alike. They are darkened and begrimed toward an expressionistic uniformity. So much easier to conceive of racists as a category rather than as flesh and blood people.

The 1950s presented various treatments of racism in popular art. Robbins particularly admired the George Stevens film Giant, which makes its Texan protagonist Bick Benedict (played by Rock Hudson) a stolid, life-long bigot, only able to confront racism when defending family honor. On stage, West Side Story suggested that not only are the causes of juvenile delinquency difficult to analyze; youthful racism is not easy to address because it is entangled with individual need for identity and social reinforcement. Such demands start young and are apparently baked in. Spielberg and Kushner have simplified this subject for their young public. The Jets are portrayed as a dark force. The Sharks are the emergent challengers. Robbins made sure that his racists were human, uniquely human, in their violent ambitions. In the Spielberg Story, individual fantasy is replaced by a child-like agit-prop.

In the 1961 film, the dancing and singing of the Jets suggested the brio of bonded gang members. The audience was drawn to the characters before they revealed the depth and consequence of their prejudice. (In the Spain of the 1960s, urban youths were reported to have enthusiastically imitated the movie’s Sharks. Who would want to join the Jets as they are portrayed in Spielberg’s universe?) Art is sometimes like this: ready to use the depiction of an amoral or immoral action to illuminate a higher truth, able to entrap the viewer’s sympathy for a character prior to revealing his or her flaws. It is always difficult to combine complex artistry and simplified political concepts. A musical is not a tract. Sad to report, the new film West Side Story becomes a victim of confusion of realms. One result of that confusion is the removal of Tony’s anguished cry of “Maria!” over Bernardo’s dead body at the end of the rumble. In the new film a dim Chino pays respects to his friend’s corpse.

Screenwriter Tony Kushner may feel more comfortable with ideas rather than with people. He appears to see individuals primarily in ideological terms. (Kushner currently leads Spielberg astray as James Lapine managed to seduce the late Steven Sondheim with pretentious themes in mid-career.) Take, for example, the ambiguity of Anita’s response to the lyrics of “America” in the new movie. She begins the number as though remembering what was pleasant about life in the tropics. Then she marches out of her tenement with her girlfriends ready to enjoy existence in New York City. The character has it both ways. First, the past homeland; then the present.

On stage, Chita Rivera’s Anita was able to suggest such contradictory notions simultaneously on the elevated level of dance characterization. You knew where she stood and moved in the midst of paradoxical choice. She took you into a private world. Anita was importing her past into her present via her dancing. Nothing so clarified occurs in Spielberg’s film. In addition, there is a movie rule that when a number is sung and danced by a character in a public location, the passers-by do not notice the stylized action. We, in the audience, are watching an interior thought process. Spielberg and Peck break this rule in their developed ensemble version of “America”. The actions of the dancing couples who join Bernardo and Anita in the streets are observed by sidewalk crowds, as though an impromptu festival is suddenly taking place. What was originally the stage Anita’s proud declaration of assimilation has become cliché folklorico. Peck’s screen Latins “sell” ethnicity all over again. Here is a perfect example of the way a racist stereotype can emerge through ignorance of an aesthetic convention and through lack of imagination. I am not suggesting that the new West Side Story is a racist work. (It ends up being not much of anything except gauche.) But it is clear that within the frame of an inherited artistic form, Spielberg, Kushner and Peck do not know what they are doing.

Justin Peck’s choreography lacks a dance idiom with enough grip to reveal itself in the variety of styles evoked: balletic, ethnic, modern, street. What we get is decorative “flash” – dynamism and confrontation rather than any sustained invention. There are talented performers among the youngsters assigned to leading roles, but no one gets to stand out in the dance sequences. And Peck relies on Twyla Tharp’s weakness for turns: when in choreographic doubt – pirouette! Like Peck’s “Blow High, Blow Low” number in the recent p.c. Carousel on Broadway, the forceful movement for his male dancers promises a great deal and delivers little that is fresh. Perhaps he realized at some point that the new film would be camera-driven rather than dance-driven. (Rumors circulated during filming that Spielberg had referred to his new project as an “action musical”, as opposed to a “dance musical”.) Choreography would be replaced by fisticuffs. Stage poetry would become bully-boy vitalism.

The trio of Spielberg-Kushner-Peck has removed the inner life from their movie’s characters. The Act 2 dream ballet has been cut (as it was in 1961), with its rationale for Maria’s decision to run away with the man who has killed her brother. In the 1961 movie, Robbins invented a short rooftop solo for Maria in partial compensation for the excision of his ballet. In the 2021 film, Maria is given an early mime scene, mussing her bed on the morning after the “Tonight” duet, performed to the Scherzo from the cut ballet. The suspense (will she be caught out?) is comic rather than lyric. Similarly, the new “Cool” plays a dramatic card rather than developing a dance motif. It’s like the new scene where Riff acquires a handgun through nihilistically pressing its barrel to his forehead, the modern Mercutio’s wit reduced to Dostoevskian anguish. Kushner is a perfect killjoy: high raillery is replaced by social critique.

Spielberg has always conceived of filmmaking primarily in technical terms, and his movies look heavily storyboarded even when he doesn’t actually pre-design. He appears to see a musical as an animated film with mickey-moused editing cued to the score. The tight cutting creates an almost headachy hop-skip-and-jump effect, reminiscent of the ballet choreography of Yury Grigorovich. There is no governing logic in the visual progression. Compare what Alain Resnais accomplished in adjusting his camera rhythms in Stavisky to the original film score commissioned from Steven Sondheim. But then Resnais was a real student of the American musical theater and spent his New York holidays watching Broadway works like West Side Story and Gypsy. He could direct in close rapport to the music.

Janusz Kaminsky’s cinematography in the new version has been praised by many. I found it to be self-indulgent, with too many crane shots and lens flares. There is also too much visual clutter. Heavy makeup, dust, fabric, fences, gratings, shadows, and reflections vie for our attention, distracting from the performers. The color grading throughout the movie is virtuoso but also too insistent, too attention-grabbing. (Does someone hereabouts distrust this material?) Here is cinematic decadence made visible, technical display without visual rhyme or metrical reason. Spielberg and Kaminsky are not only profligate. They are shameless.

Perhaps Spielberg was too busy with Puerto Rican discussion groups to think about how a cinematographer could go into overdrive. What a modern camarilla: a ruling film director, community leaders and spokespersons, a politically adventitious Kushner, and the all too impressionable Peck! Pauline Kael’s cinematic wunderkind has become a garrulous autocrat, working up favorite anecdotes for our mortified delectation. Perhaps he sees the “numbers” in a musical work as so many opportunities for techie digressions. I understand Spielberg plans an autobiographical opus next – an opportunity for fascinating vignettes about Arizona suburban life. How inspiring it must be to wake up in the morning with a culture hero’s brief to be “inclusive” and “relevant”. A Spielberg set-piece comes across as Norman Rockwell facile, slick, and hollow.

You may have noticed how many current films are portmanteau or anecdotal in their large forms. The through-line has become difficult to achieve for many directors, old and young. Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and P. T. Anderson’s Licorice Pizza both show signs of a failure to sustain cinematic thought for ninety minutes or more. They are enough to make one appreciate anew the skills of Richard Lester. And what has happened to Damien Chazelle after delivering himself of the weakly sung and danced and written La La Land?

Now I fear I must contradict myself, for there is one section of the new West Side Story that is competent. “A boy like that” and “I have a love” begin with a reflected image of Anita in Maria’s bedroom but then document two fine performances with camerawork and editing that restrain themselves and produce a strong effect. (It helps that the score is not cut – the duet is complete, unlike in the 1961 film where some editorial mind pushed too hard for pace.) For once, director, singers (Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose), and camera are in close collaboration and there are no special effects. I was reminded of what Otto Preminger accomplished with his low-lying moving camera in the Catfish Row sequences of his Porgy and Bess.

I am informed that the Spielberg movie has not only failed to find a large audience in its theatrical run’s opening weeks, it has bombed. Could the gods that watch over cinema history be speaking in financial terms? Does the movie-going audience detect a certain anxiety in Disney’s over-selling of its latest “product”?

Where is the New York stage director who will one day revive West Side Story with Robbins’ directorial and dance contributions intact? Bartlett Sher is good at this sort of thing, as witness his South Pacific, which proved faithful to the original direction of Joshua Logan. Who to supervise the Robbins choreography? Grover Dale? A new 4K Blu-ray restoration of the 1961 film is called for, but will it be funded?

At the end of the Spielberg movie, its young Maria speeds down the street to her doomed lover, ready to run away, suitcase in tow. (That awkward item is another little touch of the tepid realism to which Spielberg is condemned.) After the cortège of Jets and Sharks carries off Tony’s body and Maria exits, her abandoned valise lies unattended in the blood-spattered alley. It has fallen open, gaping in the night air. How to save it from certain misappropriation? That’s my question.

F.

__________________