THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH 2021

 "The art of film can only really exist through a highly organized betrayal of reality." 

François Truffaut  

For reasons obvious, the years 2020 and 2021 are largely a blur to me. The pandemic and subsequent lockdown of 2020 turned time into a literal ontological abstraction; with yesterdays feeling as remote and irretrievable as dreams, tomorrows never actually seeming to arrive at all. Only the tail-end of 2021 stands out in my mind. And that's chiefly because I associate it with those snail-pace early days of life in Los Angeles stumbling towards a return to something resembling "normalcy." And not a minute too soon. 

For the close of 2021 is also burned into my mind as the days when the American populace—vacillating between being independently suicidal or societally homicidal over having to endure even one second more of inconvenience—seemed hell-bent on making real the allegorical nightmares of Goldman's Lord of the Flies (1963) and Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel (1962). 

I was so hyped to see this movie; every time I saw a billboard or poster I, practically gasped

Happily, I also associate the waning days of 2021 with the off-the-charts excitement I felt about the movies slated for holiday release (Nov/Dec). A roster of titles that featured four -count 'em, FOUR!- movies I anticipated with the eagerness of a kid on Christmas Eve. A rarity of sensation that had me remembering how, when I was young, it felt like every month yielded at least a minimum of two or three movies I convinced myself I couldn't live without. Now, in advanced adulthood and during this, Hollywood's Theme Park Ride era of moviemaking (thank you, Mr. Scorsese), I feel fortunate if a calendar year yields even one movie I can get worked up about. 

To look forward to something is to foresee a tomorrow. So, at the time, with a new year on the horizon and the world emerging from beneath a devastatingly dark cloud, it was all too easy to take my enthusiasm for this uncommonly rich cinema bounty as a glimmer of post-election hope and reminder that the arts endure. 

Cinematherapy
The Big Four: The Power of the Dog, Nightmare Alley, West Side Story, & The Tragedy of Macbeth. 
Like many, I leaned heavily on the magic of movies to get me through the darkest days of the pandemic and the death throes of a certain political hellscape. At the close of 2021, the impassioned artistry of these four films lifted my spirits in ways you can't imagine. Each in their individual brilliance buoyed my certainty that art always has and always will surmount chaos and ignorance.   

As badly as I wanted to see these films, only West Side Story had me seriously considering leapfrogging over the recent spikes in COVID outbreaks and seeing it in a theater. Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed (one, actually, my partner's) and I kept my ass at home. But thanks to the swift turnaround from theatrical release to streaming, postponing my cinema gratification to early 2022 proved hardly the hardship I'd imagined it would be. 

Indeed, the decision to wait only served to feed my already keen excitement. Plus, streaming these films from the comfort of home brought with it the bonus of being able to savor each of these outstanding movies multiple times at my leisure. A perk I'm afraid I indulged to a fault. Particularly as pertaining to The Tragedy of Macbeth, which I rapturously watched five times.  

Denzel Washington as Macbeth

Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth

Brendan Gleeson as King Duncan

When it comes to the works of William Shakespeare, I'm hardly an aficionado and more the type to be seen bolting for the exit the minute someone uses "Shakespearean" as an adjective (calling to mind as it does images of capes, tights, and over-orating hams). But of all the Shakespeare plays I've read, tragedies and comedies alike, Macbeth has always been my favorite. An opinion underscored by measure of the sheer number and variety of film, television, and stage adaptions of "The Scottish Play" I've enjoyed over the years.

Bertie Carvel as Banquo

Corey Hawkins as Macduff

Alex Hassell as Ross

Macbeth, Shakespeare's blood-soaked tragedy of a nobleman brought low by ambition and a waning conscience has captivated me since it was required reading in my high school English class. As poetically engrossing on the printed page as it is emotionally absorbing when given visual dimension on the screen, I've always loved Macbeth’s heady potion of history, the supernatural, melodrama, prose, fatalism, swordplay, guilt, ambition, free will, madness, and psychology. It’s got everything! And at the center, two incredibly dynamic, complex, and grievously-flawed characters. 

But it's never been a mystery to me why Macbeth stands out from the pack. Classical in structure and (to my way of thinking) often needlessly formal in presentation, Macbeth, as the stuff of movies, is right up my alley in being precisely the kind of dagger-sharp evisceration of the dark side of humanity that characterize a great many of my favorite films. It's a theme I tend to gravitate to and for which (as this blog has revealed to me) I clearly have a decided preference.

Indeed, for me, one of the most mesmerizing things about this, director Joel Coen’s "Dreamscape meets Theater-of-the-Mind" conceptualization of The Tragedy of Macbeth is the degree to which it evokes the very essence of what my sweetheart might label as "Typical Ken Movies":

Even the Macbeths wouldn't mess with this duo

I'm crazy about Martin Scorsese. Particularly the operatic scope he brings to movies full of psychological and criminal intrigues like Raging Bull (1980), Casino (1995), and The Irishman (2019). Like The Tragedy of Macbeth, many of Scorsese's films are about violent people with Goliath-sized dreams who meet tragic ends due to their inability to get out of the way of their own inherently Lilliputian natures. 

Sly Vince Edwards (and his eyelashes) & scheming Marie Windsor in The Killing

A favorite subgenre of mine is the thriller where a meticulously planned "foolproof" crime goes stupendously off the rails due to weak wills and flaws of character. Lord and Lady Macbeth's grandiose plans are felled by picayune things like jealousy, greed, guilt, and fear. Collapse-points echoed in best-laid-plans favorites like Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), A Simple Plan (1998), Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956). 

"I say 'we,' Mr. McCabe because you think small." - McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Movies of the '70s challenged cinema's masculinity myth (and its unwaveringly sure heroes) by giving us dimensional, vulnerable males who experienced self-doubt and were not always dispositionally up to the tasks they set for themselves. A characteristic the vacillating murderer Macbeth shares with the antiheroes of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).  

"When you durst do it, then you were a man!" - The Tragedy of Macbeth

Where my partner and I truly part ways in our taste in films is my weakness for movies in which a certain emotional brutalism is used to train a spotlight on aspects of the human condition polite society usually prefers to keep relegated to the shadows. For me, Mike Nichols is a master of this: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Carnal Knowledge (1971), and Closer (2004). Where Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth won me over is that it feels wholly uninterested in the violence of swordplay and battle, but, via the extraordinary performances given by the entire cast, goes in really hard when it comes to the emotional and psychological violence the characters inflict upon one another.   

Macbeth 1971:  For Those Who Think Young
"All youth are reckless beyond words." - Hesiod
Jon Finch (28) & Francesca Annis (25) in Roman Polanski's Macbeth 

For the longest time, Roman Polanski's sprawling and horrifically naturalistic film held solitary sway as my preferred screen adaptation of Macbeth. But Joel Coen's extravagantly stylized The Tragedy of Macbeth (an interpretation so utterly different in every aspect, no rational comparison between the two can be made) has joined it in an equal-esteem partnership. Two entirely different experiences. Two magnificently realized artistic visions. 

Macbeth 2021:  No Country for Old Men 
Frances McDormand (63) & Denzel Washington (66)

In 1971, Polanski's Macbeth collaborator Kenneth Tynan famously remarked that the idea of a Lord and Lady Macbeth in their 60s was "nonsense" because "It's too late for them to be ambitious."  What an absurd statement! As anyone familiar with American politics will tell you, folks over 60 are dangerous as fuck.  

Kathryn Hunter as The Three Witches & The Old Man

I'm not going to embarrass myself and tell you how many times I watched The Tragedy of Macbeth without realizing the phenomenal Kathryn Hunter played that fourth role!

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As a film fan enamored of the emotive movie experience, Shakespeare – associating it as I do with Mr. Koller's English class – tends to present a challenge, as my knee-jerk impulse is to approach it academically. 

When I watch a screen adaptation of a Shakespeare play, particularly if I'm unfamiliar with it, my mind feels like it splinters off into three channels. One part focuses on the performances, eager to latch onto something I can psychologically or emotionally identify with in these long-ago-created characters. Another gets absorbed in the period detail and recreation of another time and place (Castles! Crowns! Courts! Capes!). And the third part has me wanting to connect to the language, trying to follow the plot while keeping an appreciative ear open to the rhythms of the words (Blank verse? Prose? Iambic pentameter?). Yet, for all these attempts to engage with the material, in the end, I usually wind up just being overly aware of how effortful it's all been.

I enjoy dissecting and analyzing movies, but AFTER I've seen the film, not WHILE I'm watching it.

To Kiss - To Kill
Mirrored framing captures the opposite ends of passion's spectrum

Because I always overthink everything, my cinema ideal has always been the movie that encourages me to turn off my mind and surrender to the sensory, visceral experience. (That I'm free to pick apart to my heart's content later.) The Tragedy of Macbeth—an aesthetically astonishing interpretation that envisions Macbeth as a noirish, metaphysical thriller —gave me just such an experience.  

Joel Coen (in his first solo effort after making 18 films with his brother, Ethan) is staggeringly successful in realizing his expressed desire to make a film of Macbeth that doesn't "hide the play." And indeed, The Tragedy of Macbeth's melding of hyper-cinematic mise-en-scène to an aggressively stylized theatricality creates a world dynamically "untethered to reality." As a more cohesively realized example of what Francis Ford Coppola strove for in One From the Heart, The Tragedy of Macbeth achieves what Truffaut called "the betrayal of reality"… film's canny ability to make use of artifice to reveal truth.

Moses Ingram as Lady Macduff

THE STUFF OF DREAMS     

As an adaptation of Macbeth that I feel prioritizes the internal and interpersonal struggles of the characters, the lack of ornamentation in The Tragedy of Macbeth's stark visual style extends to its performances. Words are spoken rather than orated, and as there is none of that "In the Grand Shakespearean Tradition" kind of acting on display (except, provocatively, as a signifier of Macbeth losing his mind), it felt like I was given greater access to the pitiable humanity behind Lord and Lady Macbeth’s desperate ambition.

The use of close-ups in The Tragedy of Macbeth forces
a sometimes discomfiting intimacy with the characters.  

Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel's camera seems to exalt (as I did) in letting light and shadow play across the cast's intelligent eyes and expressive, lived-in faces. To watch a contemporary American film is to be bombarded by so much botox, fillers, and tightly-pulled flesh, discerning the display of emotion becomes a game. The facial wrinkles and furrows on glorious display in The Tragedy of Macbeth have poetry.

The Kid Who Would Be King
Banquo and his son Fleance (Lucas Barker)

There's an exchange in the neo-noir thriller Black Widow (1987) where investigator Debra Winger asks serial widow Theresa Russell why marrying even one wealthy man wasn't enough to make her rich. Russell responds: "Rich is hard. You never really figure you're quite there."

Swap "power" for rich, and you've got Macbeth in a nutshell. 

The Tragedy of Macbeth taps into a characteristic I've observed in very ambitious people: the joy of attaining an objective always seems so short-lived because there’s no distinction between greed and growth. There's never any arrival point for satisfaction because "having a lot" still doesn't mean "having the most," so there is always more to get. Inevitably, ambition, when unmoored to the spiritual overseers of morality and ethics, creates an internal void. A void that comes to be bridged by that ruinous, self-serving philosophy of the power-hungry…" the end justifies the means."  

" 'Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil."   /   "Yet, here's a spot."

Lady Macbeth, scoffing at the aftermath of violence, is later haunted by its phantom. The mirroring of shots in The Tragedy of Macbeth infers that despite the exercising of free will, events follow a predetermined pattern. 

Ignoble Denzel Washington is my favorite Denzel Washington.
His riveting performance as Macbeth totally overwhelmed me. It's a thing of beauty

PERFORMANCES   

Casting Shakespeare with two top-tier American Oscar winners known for their straightforward, naturalistic acting styles sparked all kinds of "Consider the possibilities!" excitement in me. My curiosity about what qualities Denzel Washington (with his unassailable gravitas) and Frances McDormand (she of the stripped-down emotional bluntness) would bring to The Tragedy of Macbeth was rewarded tenfold.  

It plays no small part in my adoration of The Tragedy of Macbeth that Washington and McDormand's riveting, poignant performances single-handedly elevate the emotional stakes of this tale like no other I've seen. This is the first adaptation of Macbeth to give me waterworks. 

There's no end to the accolades I heap upon every member of this assured, accomplished cast. Standouts are Bertie Cavell's Banquo, with his sad eyes and heroic eyebrows. Moses Ingram's regal Lady Macduff. And then there's that flawless changeling, Kathryn Hunter. But a particular favorite is Alex Hassell as the sly Ross, whose role is amplified here and is costumed in a way that fittingly and amusingly has him resembling a male Morticia Addams. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY  

A parting shot of appreciation for the absolutely breathtaking beauty of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Exquisite Expressionism in a barren, storybook nightmare. 

Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnell -  Production design: Stefan Dechant

Sparse brevity is not only a visual characteristic of The Tragedy of Macbeth. In a Coen Brothers interview about their process adapting Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel No Country for Old Men for their 2007 film, they remarked that they don't edit so much as compress. 

I'd say that perfectly describes how Joel Coen delivers a traditionally 2 ½ hour Shakespeare work (Polanski's Macbeth runs 2 hours 20 minutes) in a bare-bones 105 minutes.

The paring down of the original text is so judicious I never felt I missed a thing. Indeed, I had to re-read Shakespeare's Macbeth with a copy of Coen's screenplay at my side to even know what was excised. 

January 2021: In a world emerging from darkness, The Tragedy of Macbeth made an indelible, enlivening impression on me, for it's sometimes too easy to forget the transcendent power of art. I think it's a genuinely masterful film of astonishing beauty that made real for me, the catharsis of tragedy.  

BONUS MATERIAL

A clip from The Tragedy of Macbeth 

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2023

WEST SIDE STORY 2021

At age 76, multi-Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is a full 11 years my senior. But when it comes to our mutual, lifelong love affair/obsession with West Side Story, he's practically my twin.

Both of us were introduced to West Side Story at roughly the same impressionable age: Spielberg, when he was 10, via the original 1957 Broadway cast album his father brought home one day (Spielberg dedicates this film to his late father); me, at age 11, by way of the 1967 theatrical re-release of the 1961 Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins movie (detailed in an earlier post). The indelible impression this ingeniously urbanized, musicalized retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet made on our young imaginations—book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, original stage production conceived, choreographed, and directed by Jerome Robbins—easily branded West Side Story as the first musical crush for us both. 

And while I never got in trouble for singing "Gee, Officer Krupke" at the dinner table like Spielberg, I can certainly attest to having immersed myself in West Side Story's OST Lp with equally matched zeal and fervor. At 11-years-old, I may not have been able to memorize Joyce Kilmer's "Trees," but should anyone have asked, I could have easily recited the lyrics to every song from West Side Story.   

1957                                                 1961

Surprisingly, this awareness of a shared reverence for West Side Story did absolutely nothing to mollify the host of misgivings flooding my brain when word came out that Spielberg would be cutting his musical teeth by directing a new screen adaptation of West Side Story. With each new press release cagily sidestepping the dreaded R-word: "remake” in favor of the PR-friendly: “reimaging,”; I could feel the muscles in my neck coiling tighter and tighter. The thought of anyone tinkering with my beloved West Side Story immediately sent me spiraling off into something akin to a film geek's version of bling Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ “Five Stages of Grief”:

1. Denial – I reminded myself there’d been fruitless talk about remaking West Side Story for decades. Nothing ever came of them, and this time would be no different.

2. Anger – I railed at the Hollywood machine and its remake/franchise addiction. Who the hell asked for a remake of West Side Story? With all the absolutely dreadful musicals in need of remaking, they choose one of the few that got it right? And what about all those great shows that have yet to make it to the screen? Better they should make a film version of Sondheim's Follies or help get Glenn Close that long-deserved Oscar by making of movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.

3. Bargaining – Well, I reasoned…if West Side Story HAS to be remade, at least it’ll be by a talented, seasoned old pro like Steven Spielberg. A man who truly loves the material and knows how to tell a story. I kept reminding myself that it could just as easily have been Rob Marshall (Nine), Susan Strohman (The Producers), Tom Hooper (Cats), or Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) at the helm. Yikes!

4. Depression – The first leaked photo of the new cast of WSS was underwhelming, to say the least. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But this one left me with just one: "Uh-oh!"

Though I've since had to eat my words, my first thought when I saw this cast photo (with its weird cut-and-paste look that turns everyone into floating Colorforms® figures) was that it reminded me of something I'm always happy to forget: an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. The new Maria looked ideal, but the rest of the cast called forth nightmare visions of Newsies (1992) or worse...Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line (1985).

5. Acceptance – Every single argument of resistance I'd held regarding the wrong-headed inadvisability of what I'd come to regard as "Spielberg's Folly" crumbled into an irrelevant heap at my feet when I got my first glimpse of West Side Story via the premiere of its teaser trailer during the 93rd Academy Awards telecast on Sunday, April 25, 2021. I wasn't ready. 

Apparently, all the seized-up muscles in my neck needed to get them to relax was for me to hear that tritone "Jets whistle" again. And all that was necessary to uproot my firmly dug-down heels was to see a mere 90 seconds of montage heralding Spielberg's vision. The trailer gave me instant goosebumps AND waterworks, and suddenly the movie I'd scoffed at for well over a year had become the movie I absolutely had to see. 

The Sharks (click image to enlarge)

Once I stopped resisting the idea of a new West Side Story (i.e., focusing on the innumerable, highly probable ways it could be a disaster) my mind began entertaining the tantalizing possibilities a new adaptation posed. For example, I had not considered how thrilling it might be to hear new, full-scale arrangements of all my favorite West Side Story songs. Auguring particularly well for Spielberg's adaptation was the fact that there was to be none of that desperate "Oscar Bait" business of adding a new song to the score...one composed "Especially for the movie!"

The Jets (click image to enlarge)

West Side Story’s groundbreaking use of dance is such a significant part of its legacy and appeal, I couldn’t wait to see what this version had up its sleeve in terms of tackling the one aspect of the show many fans consider to be sacrosanct; Jerome Robbins’ iconic original choreography. Here again, I was encouraged by Spielberg's instincts. Fearful that he was going to select a flavor-of-the-month choreographer from music videos or pop concerts, my heart leapt when I learned that the film's dances would be created by Justin Peck, Tony Award winner and resident choreographer for the New York City Ballet. Now, you're talking!  — ¡Ponle fuego, vamos!     

But standing head and shoulders above everything else (eclipsing even my elation at finding out that James Corden hadn't been cast in any role) was my hope for this new West Side Story to offer, at last, a “cringe-free” viewing experience. My love for the classic 1961 version (and its stars, Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, and Russ Tamblyn) has never waned in all this time. But with each passing year—what with contemporary America rolling out the welcome mat to old-school racism, and the advent of HD Blu-ray rendering all those actors in brownface makeup with a clarity as jarring as it is embarrassing—it has grown more difficult for me to minimize and look beyond the wince-inducing whitewash casting and the stereotyped depiction of its Puerto Rican characters. The chance for a more ethnically-authentic West Side Story was exhilarating in its potential.    

Rachel Zegler as Maria Vasquez

Anson Elgor as Anton (Tony) Wyzek

Ariana DeBose as Anita Palacio

David Alvarez as Bernardo Vasquez

Mike Faist as Riff Lorton

Rita Moreno as Valentina

Although I desperately wanted to see West Side Story when it opened at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood on Friday, December 10, 2021, a post-Thanksgiving surge in local COVID cases gave pause to my enthusiasm. Therefore, diligently avoiding reviews and spoilers in the interim (easier than you'd think), I finally got to see West Side Story a rather swift-passing four months later when my partner alerted me of it being streamed online in HD for free to AARP members (ka-ching!) as part of its “Movies for Grown-Ups” series. (I think AARP understood the target demographic for this West Side Story better than Spielberg or 20th Century Fox.) 

Josh Andres Rivera as Chino Martin
character change: now a thicc snack

iris menas as Anybodys
character change: now a transmasculine teen and first-rate ass-kicker  

Jump ahead in time: Me in front of the TV screen, surrounded by junk food, watching the stunning time-lapse end credits (by Drew Geraci) play out over a stirringly lush medley of Leonard Bernstein's beautiful music. The red-eyed, runny-nosed, blubbering mess I’d been reduced to at the end of 2 ½ hours only confirming what I’d already known after five minutes...as far as this lifelong fan of West Side Story was concerned, Steven Spielberg’s masterwork adaptation had caught the moon. One-handed catch. I loved it.

Brian d'Arcy James as Sergeant Krupke / Corey Stoll as Lieutenant Schrank

Hats off to any film that can--at my age--reignite that childlike awe I've always held for the way movies can create entire worlds of the believably impossible within a tiny, rectangular frame. Watching West Side Story turned out to be one of the most enlivening movie-watching experiences I’ve had in too long a while. Not to put too much on the shoulders of Spielberg & Co., but who knew that a good, old-fashioned movie musical…magnificently realized…was just the joyous, hopeful glimpse of light I needed to reaffirm my sense of life beginning to emerge from under the dark cloak of Hellscape: America post-2016?

I like Spielberg's decision not to subtitle the Spanish dialogue.
The screenplay is available online, and one of the many sharp conversations I translated is
Anita's challenge to Bernardo that he hasn't married her because she's Black

I’ve read pieces characterizing the changes to West Side Story by Tony Kushner (who wrote the screenplays for Spielberg’s Munich-2005, Lincoln-2012, and The Fabelmans-2022) as additions. To me, the work of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer feel more like extractions. He extracts the era-defined racial myopia of both the stage and movie adaptations to make the material resonate as truer, not newer.

The pleasure of Spielberg's West Side Story is that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to see a movie musical that actually feels like a genuine movie. By that, I mean a movie musical that isn't ironic, apologetic, a pastiche, a cartoon, a music video on steroids, or one of those depressingly sterile Glee/High School Musical things that mistake garish hyperactivity for the stuff of dreams. West Side Story, with its unabashed romanticism and playful surrender to the conventions of the genre, feels like an old-fashioned movie musical in the very best sense of the word. Evidence, perhaps, that a…ahem, mature, traditionalist director like Spielberg was just the person for the job.

My favorite thing about the glorious cinematography by Oscar-winner and longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List-1993, Saving Private Ryan- 1998, A.I.-2001, Lincoln-2012) is the use of backlight flare and reflective bursts of light and color to create the glamour of dreamy romance or the flashpoint tension of violence. 

 

As much as I respect his talent and have enjoyed several of his movies (Jaws, The Color Purple), Steven Spielberg has never been one of my favorite directors (I compiled a list once, and he doesn’t even make the top 30). Part of this is due to how often he works in genres that never much interested me (action, adventure, war movies, historical dramas). But I also find in his films and directing style a tendency to lapse into mawkish sentimentality or boyish whimsy that in many instances feels misplaced, or contributes to undermining moments of genuine emotion.

But personal tastes aside, I don’t think anyone who knows anything about filmmaking would argue that Spielberg is not a gifted visual storyteller, skilled craftsman, and well-versed in the vocabulary of cinema. The marvelous thing revealed in seeing Spielberg apply his particular brand of “Great Entertainer” genius to a musical, is that the dominant traits of the genre: exuberance, nostalgia, romanticism, dreamy fantasy, broad strokes characterizations, oversized emotions, amplified sentiment…play specifically to Spielberg’s strengths, flatter his flaws, and turn even his most irksome vices into virtues.

Ilda Mason as Luz  / Ana Isabelle as Rosalia

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What ultimately cooled my “How dare they tamper with a classic!” indignation over West Side Story was the degree to which every square inch of every frame stood testament to Spielberg's evident care and affection for the material. His palpable desire to do right by the story, music, and dances gives the film an irresistible exuberance that imbues the now 65-year-old musical with an urgency and freshness I honestly hadn't thought possible. Even as I think about it now, I'm so impressed by the way Spielberg’s West Side Story manages to be respectfully faithful to the theatrical production, honor the film version, yet still leave its mark as a boldly distinctive and personal adaptation.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY 

For a movie musical to really get to me, there's usually a sequence or image that captures my imagination and etches itself in my mind as emblematic of the moment my heart was lost. Like a dream portal…it’s not anything I consciously select, but rather, some kind of internal Polaroid snapshot taken during that elusive and spontaneous “goosebump moment.”  In Ken Russell's The Boy Friend, it was when two dancers became Art Deco figurines on a giant gramophone. In Cabaret it was Liza Minnelli draped like a Dali painting over the back of a chair singing "Mein Herr." And in Jesus Christ Superstar it was when Judas emerges from the catacombs of an ancient arena in a Vegas-fringed bodysuit, flanked by a trio of angels with glowing white afros. 

My West Side Story goosebump moment, which has already taken root in my mind as the apex instant of the entire film, is that phenomenal low-angle tracking shot of Anita and a squad of women racing down the middle of the street...full throttle in heels, capris, and twirly skirts a-flipping…in the “America” number. John Ford would understand why this shot is so effective ("When the horizon is at the top, it's interesting. When it's at the bottom, it's interesting. When it's in the middle it's boring as shit!"), but add the combination of music, movement, and jubilant playfulness of the dancers, and you've got a scene that made me gasp as my heart hit the ceiling. 

I love that Rita Moreno, 1961 West Side Story's Oscar-winning Anita, is a co-producer on this film and appears in a substantial supporting role created for the film. She's wonderful as you'd expect, and if she didn't get nominated for an Oscar again (she didn't) it wasn't for lack of trying. Her rendition of "Somewhere" is a heartbreaker, and Spielberg practically crafts her role as a series of ready-made Oscar preview clips. All the odds seemed in her favor, but perhaps Natalie Wood was looking down and exacted a little Awards Season karma.

PERFORMANCES

The Golden Age movie musicals I watched on TV as a kid (original vehicles designed to showcase the talents of a particular star) conditioned me not to expect too much in the way of acting from musicals. In my teens, when the economic demands of adapting Broadway hits for the screen necessitated the casting of bankable names, films like Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, and Man of La Mancha all seemed to come with mutually-exclusive ultimatums: “Do you want movie stars who can actually act, or do you want song & dance talent with the screen charisma of Spam? Take your pick, ‘cause you can't have both.” 

Everyone shines in West Side Story (hands down the best-acted WSS I've ever seen), but Ariana DeBose (Oscar winner), Mike Faist, & David Alvarez are particularly effective in their roles.   

So, I’ve nothing but admiration for Spielberg using his industry clout (the most financially successful director of all time) and fame (he, in essence, is the film’s bankable star)’s the film’s sole bankable name) to make West Side Story the right way: with an extraordinary ensemble cast of young Broadway-trained. (And hallelujah! No one from the world of pop music!)

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Understandably, many will still find West Side Story inherently problematic no matter how many issues are addressed, but personally, I'm overjoyed that Steven Spielberg made a West Side Story I can embrace fully, rather than love at arm's-length. And now, a few parting shots in appreciative recognition of Steven Spielberg, the visual storyteller.

Prologue / Jet Song

Something's Coming

The Dance at the Gym

Maria

Balcony Scene (Tonight)

America

Gee, Officer Krupke

One Hand, One Heart

Cool

Tonight Quintet

I Feel Pretty

As best I could, I’ve tried to keep comparisons between the two West Side Story films to a minimum. The reason why can be found in Stephen Sondheim’s 2010 memoir Finishing the Hat. In it, he relates an anecdote about nervously inviting Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman to see his 1973 Broadway musical A Little Night Music, which Sondheim & Hugh Wheeler had adapted from Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night. 

At the end of the show, Sondheim was quick to apologize to the filmmaker for the liberties taken, whereupon Bergman calmed his fears with a perceptive observation: “No, no, Mr. Sondheim, I enjoyed the evening very much. Your piece has nothing to do with my movie, it merely has the same story.” 

That's how I feel about West Side Story 1961 and 2021. The world can accommodate both magnificent musicals. One doesn't have to replace or cancel out the other. And as I have fallen in love with each, there's no need for me to have to choose between them. They're both superb, entirely different movies. They merely share the same story.

BONUS MATERIAL

Not His First Time at the Rodeo

West Side Story may be Steven Spielberg's first full-scale musical, but clearly, the genre has always fascinated him. Musical sequences appear in several of his films (1941, The Color Purple). 1991's Hook was actually conceived and partially shot as a musical (songs by John Williams & Leslie Bricusse). And sometime in the early '80s, a musical titled Reel to Reel was planned but scrapped.

Controversially, Spielberg's Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (1984) credits sequence is an elaborate production number of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" choreographed by Danny Daniels (Pennies from Heaven - 1981).

Kate Capshaw sings to her future husband while modeling what appear
to be sequined gardening gloves in Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom  

Steven with his father, Arnold Spielberg - June 1999

Clip from "West Side Story" - 2021

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 -  2022