West Side Story 4K 2021 Ultra HD 2160p

The original West Side Story was once a breakthrough in the field of musicals. And curiously enough, the idea of a remake came at a time when the genre was gradually returning to the mainstream (La La Land, The Greatest Showman). Of course, taking on such immortal classics is always difficult, but if anyone can carry such a load, it is Steven Spielberg - who, by the way, has not yet tried himself in feature musicals. In his version, the male lead will be played by Ansel Elgort, and the female lead by Rachel Segler. Among other things, in his version Spielberg decided to restore historical justice: now Puerto Ricans are played by Latin American actors.

West Side Story 4K Review
Steven Spielberg has filmed everything from soldiers landing on Omaha Beach to encounters with dinosaurs and extraterrestrial civilizations (and more than once), but never before has the director entered the territory of either musicals or remakes. And if the heritage of cinematography, even if not literally rewritten by him, but somehow germinated in his films, music and dance have not become the central expressive means of his cinematic language until now. One can only envy the director's courage, who in his eighth decade is not afraid not only to try new things and tread unproven ground, genre or theme, but also to present us the landscape of great romantic love.

The scale of the legacy of West Side Story is truly great and without reminder: the assimilation of Romeo and Juliet in the slums of New York City, where all windows from the first floor to the last are tightly wrapped in garlands of clotheslines; the story has many faces, but sounds always recognizable. Leonard Bernstein's music, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics and Arthur Laurents' script first commanded choreographer Jerome Robbins to conquer Broadway and then moved to film (with the help of Robert Wise) to disarm the film academics and carry off nine statuettes. Sixty years later, the first step of the '50s blowout is still the same -- a guy meets a girl. She's Puerto Rican Maria (Rachel Segler), he's American Tony, and he's actually Polish Anton (Ansel Elgort). But according to the laws of the streets, the rules are set by those whose ancestors first came to this land, that is, the Jets (not only the "Przeks" but also the Irish, the Jews and other descendants of the immigrants who built the States), and the swarthy Sharks have to squeeze into the corners of the "earthly paradise". The West Side has been bulldozed by bulldozer cores, and soon the ghetto will become Lincoln Center.

What was it about this pompous world of puffy skirts, dusty sneakers and bloody knuckles that so attracted Spielberg? The closing credits draw a dedication to Dad with quiet fondness. "West Side Story" is the director's first film since the death of his father, Arnold Spielberg, in 2020: one can discern not only a gesture of filial affection, but also an ideological extension of the family tree. The director's grandparents came to America at the dawn of the twentieth century, and although Stephen was born the son of American citizens, his family name belonged to orthodox Jews: tradition has always reminded the director that outsiders have no place here. One hears an echo of the plot: the confrontation in "The Story" was originally conceived as an act of religious intolerance - the Montagues and Capuletti in the Variety were supposed to be Jews and Catholics. This is probably why Spielberg, who today could be considered a more patriotic director than anyone else, still left room in his filmography for a reflection on the consciousness of the "outsider. Before the American dream can come true, it must be appropriated by right.

The discussion of the director's relationship with the classics, on the one hand, leads away from the very subject of the conversation, i.e. the film (when will this text begin to compliment the dresses and vocals?), but, on the other hand, is a necessary context to justify the fact of the film's release. Spielberg himself says that he was 10 years old when he first heard the chords of Tonight, Tonight on the LP, and the music has been on his mind ever since, but one child's love in this case seems to be insufficient. Yes, the director basically thinks of making movies as psychotherapy sessions, telling his fears, complexes and secrets over and over again on the big screen. But despite all this, the author's desire to "retell" the classics from the outside may look as if someone in the middle of the twenty-first century would want to remake "Titanic" (though it's likely to happen, too). The last thing you expect from the great Hollywood pillars is a remake, and with the shameless trappings of a "re-launch": In Spielberg's picture, the drugstore owner is played by Rita Morena, the actress who played Anita in the 1961 film that earned the actress her only Oscar (but, most likely, at least the nomination will be repeated).

But that's the main magic of Steven Spielberg's directing: things that might seem trivial, primitive and commonplace, if anyone else uttered them from the screen, in his mouth/eyes/hands become sacred revelations and not truisms, but immutable truths. Love is the only thing that can save us all, but it doesn't always work either. War over skin color leads nowhere. Patriarchal foundations like "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" are not just destructive but deadly, and revenge brings no redemption to the avenged. For a century, the cinema (and forever, theater, literature and other art forms) has been saying this. But Spielberg's magic (or skill?) lies precisely in how he manages to speak through the prism of eternal innocence.


It is the question of language and the search for communication that has always been a central motif in the author's paintings. In "Close Encounters of the Third Degree" the means of communication with the visitors from outer space was music, in "Alien" - the outstretched finger of E.T., touching the rough skin of triceratops replaced words in "Jurassic Park", and the linguistic barrier in "West Side Story" does not remain only a measure of cinematic convention. Speeches spoken in Spanish are left undubbed so that the gap is more palpable and the chasm felt even by those on the other side of the screen. When the words are powerless, the sounds come in - first whistles, then clicks, and then, as the cacophony of the streets and the fervor of the young people gain strength, so do the music and dance. In a conventional genre often referred to as overly theatrical, Spielberg interprets the attributes of the musical with no other means of understanding them. If his characters can come to terms with aliens, can they not also find a common language for people who live on the same block? And that makes West Side Story 2021 more like Pocahontas than the 1961 film (which, in general, was not the reference point - the author took the play as his source of inspiration). But by bringing to the forefront the romantic feelings that, for Spielberg, were previously only part of family love, he is still, like a child, shy of his parents' bedroom door. Dance is still a sublime body language, but not an act of corporeality capable of replacing any speech.

The sensual quest for communication and the emotional landscape of the picture also influence the architecture of the frame construction. Spielberg's space is no less alive than the enthusiastic smile on the lovers' faces (the director's devoted collaborator Janusz Kaminski is behind the camera again): it narrows, expands, moves, turns upside down, and occasionally makes not only the audience's heart swoon, but also their hands clap. At one point, the perfection of the shot even risks seeming tedious: won't the author make a single misfire until the very finale? And not a single dancer will ever slip up? But the search for a flaw in the infallible picture is provoked by the inner pessimist, who whispers that there is no ideal. Let it be so, but the director managed to get as close to it as possible. Amid the endless drizzle of a pandemic that practically demolished the box office like a slum, Spielberg makes a great humanistic film - large-scale, impeccably beautiful and, despite its tragedy, optimistic: if in 60 years the story of lovers from the West Side has not lost its relevance, in another 60 years it will surely be just a dressy vignette from the past.