West Side Story

West Side Story (2021) is a remake of the 1957 musical and Spielberg's first. There are two gangs on Manhattan's west side: the Jets, of Irish and Italian descent, and the Puerto Rican Sharks. The neighbourhood is being demolished; the city is clearing it for Lincoln Center. Both groups will have to leave and the street they are fighting over is about to cease to exist. That emphasis is not in the 1961 film. Spielberg stages the opening in the demolition site and sets the conflict on a piece of ground. The second change is language. The Sharks speak Spanish among themselves and those passages are not subtitled. Spielberg did it deliberately: he wanted the two languages to carry equal weight and to leave the audience without translation to lean on. The casting changed as well. The Puerto Rican parts went to Latin actors; in the 1961 film most were played in dark makeup, a choice criticised for decades. Rita Moreno played Anita in 1961 and won an Oscar for it. Here she plays a newly written character and is one of the producers. Ariana DeBose won supporting actress as Anita, becoming the second performer to win an Oscar in that role. Janusz Kamiński photographed it. It failed commercially; it opened during the return to cinemas after the pandemic and the musical's audience did not come. The dancing is shot wide with few cuts and the bodies stay fully visible. It runs 156 minutes. Good for: musicals, Spielberg, and classic adaptations. Less good for: it is long and the density of songs is heavy if you dislike musicals.