Sooner or later everyone tries with the musical, who has always been a dear friend of American cinema. Both in the cartoon version, Disney teaches. Both in the pop opera version that blends song and dance and sinks like a blade on wide contents, from comedy to tragedy. Such a seductive and profitable format could not leave an author like Steven Spielberg indifferent, that if one day he will be considered the number one director in the ranking, it will also be because he has crossed all genres with a talent to be amazed. Far from the cerebral, colorful reviews of Baz Luhrmann, from the recent sophisms of Annette of Los Carax, but also from the more or less successful attempts of Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma, Altman, the 75-year-old Spielberg imposes his polished and majestic aesthetic and revisits without substantial updates a classic such as West Side Story, nevertheless keeping its explosive topicality intact.
It is, as known, of a romantic-social allegory of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare which, after conquering Broadway, became a famous 1961 film directed by Robert Wise and, for the ballet part, by Jerome Robbins, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The blockbuster won 10 Oscars and is still considered a cornerstone of pop culture. In the hands of Spielberg the most Christmas of the works on the bill takes shape. A politically and philologically correct eulogy of the hypnotic force of cinema and its capacity, as Sorrentino says in was the hand of God, to distract from a poor reality.
We are therefore in the New York of the 1950s, dominated by gangs, from gentrification, from social disconnection. Around Lincoln Square, two rival gangs are opposed: the Puerto Rican Sharks and the native white Jets. Theirs is a pariah war, marginalized and suffering, in which apartheid, urban devastation, violence, anger enter. In between, the doves Tony and Maria. He, the fiery former leader of the Jets ended up in jail and now out of the game with the firm intention of avoiding trouble. She, sweet interpreter of the American dream, able to see the light beyond the skyscrapers, the brunette sister of the boxer Bernardo, leader of the Sharks who, with medieval logic, would like to push her into the arms of the plastered Chino.
The two fall in love dancing and singing. And flirting they continue for the 156 minutes of the film, from the initial love at first sight to resilience in the face of all obstacles to the point of tragedy. The anti-racist message, framed in a metropolitan tangle of ruins, graffiti and fire escape stairs blends well with the tormented love story. Good and Evil face each other in the war between Latinos and gringos.
The protagonists are Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler, fresh, agile, with that serious and concentrated look that translates the unhappiness of the scorched youth of then and today. But the ensemble film, not only in the musical sense, and not insignificant the contribution of the rest of the cast: Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Josh Andrs Rivera, Ana Isabelle, Corey Stoll. Spielberg, with screenwriter Tony Kushner, strolls on themes known to create a sumptuous show that, if it fails to surpass Wise’s film, I will certainly add an important brick on the rebirth of cinema post pandemic.
WEST SIDE STORY di Steven Spielberg
(Usa, 2021, duration 156 ‘)
con Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, Josh Andrs Rivera, Ana Isabelle, Corey Stoll, Brian D’Arcy James
Rating: *** 1/2 out of 5
In the halls
December 25, 2021 | 09:40
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