West Side Story - Spielberg remake

[abatt]

3 hours ago, On Pointe said:

Yeah,  there was some shade thrown in the article.  But Patricia Delgado was brought into Ivo Van Hove's recent Broadway production,  along with Rafael Trujillo,  ostensibly to bring Latin flavor to Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's choreography as well.  So apparently Mrs. Peck can get work without her husband's backing.

No doubt Ms. Delgado can get work without Jusitn Peck.  She is an acclaimed ballerina.  The point of the article, though, was that she may not have been the right person for the job on the WSS film.  Interesting that  Trujillo was brought in for the Broadway production of WSS, insofar as Trujillo does have experience in staging Latin dance styles.  I think he was nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway musical On Your Feet, about Gloria Estefan's  career. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by abatt

[cubanmiamiboy]

47 minutes ago, abatt said:

No doubt Ms. Delgado can get work without Jusitn Peck.  

She does indeed. And her sister Janette,  now retired....? Psst...even better. She was our own Tiler Peck. We truly miss them both down here....😒

[On Pointe]

Roger Ebert famously said that a critic must consider the film that the creators made,  not the one he or she wishes they had made.  Gia Kourlas wanted the dream ballet in the new WSS.  Well they didn't include it,  so deal with what they did include and judge that.  Overall I would say that Justin Peck's work was excellent.  Was it better than Robbins'?  No.  But,  as they say in Hollywood,  it didn't suck.  (That's considered a compliment.)

[dirac]

I saw it tonight in socially distanced circumstances. There are decisions I disagreed with and criticisms to make, but this is an excellent movie that should be seen in a theater if possible. If this had been directed by someone forty years younger he'd be the hottest thing on the block, weak box office or not. Overall, pleasantly surprised and at the end I was moved, which didn't happen for me with the old movie.

[miliosr]

Box office was $2.85 million for Christmas weekend and $2.1 million (preliminary) for New Year's weekend. Total US gross after 4 weeks is $29.6 million.

Edited January 2, 2022 by miliosr

[dirac]

Spielberg turns 75 today.  Anyone see Ariana DeBose on SNL?

Expanding on what I wrote earlier – as my earlier posts indicate, I was skeptical of this venture and in some respects went to the movie to bury Steven and not to praise him, but credit where credit is due. It’s a shame that he didn’t try his hand at a musical earlier, and given that box office trends are running against musicals now, this may well be his last.

Plus: Elgort and Zegler have tons more chemistry than Beymer and Wood (not saying much, true). As canbelto said, the height discrepancy is a source for humor. They look cute together. You can imagine what they might be like as a pair if there had been a happy ending – Maria would boss Tony and the big guy would be putty in her hands. Elgort’s pipes are okay if not quite up to the demands of the score, but this was also true to some extent of Zegler, so he wasn’t overpowered vocally.

Tony also has to have chemistry with Riff, and the relationship between the two is stronger in this version. (Mike Faist is about the only member of the cast who convinces as a slum kid and he is terrific.) “Cool” is moved up to “Act One” instead of “Act Two,” and it becomes a kind of pas de deux for the two of them. I thought it was also the most effective of Peck’s dances, even if shifting the number to pre-rumble creates other problems. I can’t say Elgort is persuasive as the inner city samurai Tony’s supposed to be in this telling, but probably just as well, because given the whopper of a backstory this Tony has, that would be scary. (BTW Spielberg and Kushner exhibit a touching faith in the reforming powers of the New York penal system; Tony emerges from a year in the slammer not coarsened and/or traumatized, as a kid like him might be, but thoughtful and eager to begin a new life.)

Minus: Elgort and Zegler both have trouble with the powerful emotions at the end, and Zegler’s speech at the end falls a bit flat. (Wood was better here.) They aren’t helped by losing their big song. Maria can’t sing “Somewhere” to the dying Tony because neither of them have heard it, much less sang any of it.

Plus: Spielberg’s dynamic camerawork during the dance sequences is impressive. He gets in among the bodies, showing us details that only the camera can while still not losing sight of the larger structure of the dance. We’ve seen enough directors fail at this to realize how hard it is to do, and Spielberg makes it look like rolling over in bed.

Minus: For all that, the dances aren’t as effective or powerful as they were in the original, and since WSS is dance-driven, this is a big deal. In this version, the dances are more like diversions, whereas in 1961 they powered the movie.While Justin Peck isn’t Jerome Robbins, I’m not sure if this was avoidable. The 1961 movie fell between the two stools of stylization and realism, and Robbins’ choreography is better suited to the former, in which the violence is expressed through the dancing. Once you take these boys out of the theater to do their jumps and turns on real city streets, problems start. Peck’s new choreography cuts way back on the balletic stylizing of Robbins’ but he doesn’t replace it with anything as distinctive. But even if he had, seeing the dancing alongside “real” bloody ears and faces would, I think, take away from it.

I did not find it significant that the Sharks’ dances weren’t particularly Latin in flavor. I’m guessing they wanted to avoid the “Latin” flourishes in the old choreography that have been criticized by some.

I prefer the little bridal shop as the setting for “I Feel Pretty” and “One Hand, One Heart.”

Kushner has disposed of some of the cornier moments from the dialogue of the original book and the old movie, but he’s substituted some cornpone of his own and there is a lot of it. Turns out Officer Schrank is quite the sociologist and expert in the economic and social effects of urban renewal. Who knew? After he’s done lecturing the boys and us we hear the same points again, and maybe for a third time in Spanish, a good deal of which went past me without subtitles. Also, do we need a bunch of extra backstory to explain why Tony and Bernardo are prone to violence? They're gang members. (I also had problems with the implicit rationalization of gang violence in this version.)

The Valentina character did not work for me.

 

[California]

The remake of West Side Story will start streaming on Disney+ and HBO Max on March 2, 2022!

Yippee! Glad I waited. 

[dirac]

Thanks for the heads-up, California. The picture will lose a lot on the smaller screen but it will still be worth checking out. I'm glad I took the opportunity to see it in a theater.

[California]

I just watched WSS for the first time on HBO Max and I'm glad it's also streaming on Disney+, so I can watch it many more times. A few quick impressions:

• The score seems virtually unchanged (except for the order of certain numbers), but somebody decided that the choreography had to be redone "from scratch." I don't know if this was a restriction in the permissions needed to use the Bernstein music, but it's an odd feeling. The score is so totally familiar from the 1961 film (which I've probably watched a thousand times and have permanently saved on my DVR), that it's jarring to see it used with different choreography. And the choreography in the original was so spectacular, did it need to be replaced?
• Vocals: I'm glad that there was no "ghost-dubbing" and was impressed with the singing of Tony and Maria. And what a treat that Rita Moreno got to sing briefly as Doc's widow (as she was also dubbed in 1961).
• Screenplay: The order of songs seems to track the Broadway show more closely than the film. In the film, Officer Krupke and Stay Cool come much later, e.g. I do like that the dialogue for Maria in the last scene is virtually identical to the film, but I miss that shawl that a rival gang member put over her shoulders in the film - an incredibly touching moment of resolution.
• Sets: I love that they shot some scenes at the Cloisters, which I have visited just once, but love. I hope it triggers more visitors to a beautiful museum.
• New elements: The injection of boxing and more guns seemed odd to me. Was that meant to make it more contemporary or more historically accurate?
• Language: I was a bit annoyed that they didn't bother with subtitles for the Spanish dialogue. Was this a way of nudging us that we should all learn a little Spanish? Or reminding us that we are ignorant of the language of many of our fellow Americans? 
• Warning: I thought it was odd that they felt the need for an opening warning that the film shows the use of nicotine. How about one that it shows gun violence?

Edited March 2, 2022 by California

[dirac]

Thanks for your review, California.

When dubbing is done with care it can be highly effective and IMO preferable in many circumstances to inferior “real” vocals. Not all dancers can sing and vice versa. Rita Hayworth, a fine dancer, could not have starred in musicals without the aid of dubbing. Catherine Deneuve was dubbed in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and to this viewer it was a good deal – the dubbing was convincing and I got to look at Deneuve for two hours.

I think it was Kushner who said in an interview that they didn’t want to “privilege” English over Spanish by using subtitles. I presume this was a pitch to the Latino audience they were hoping to attract instead of the musical theater/WSS faithful and/or older viewers who did turn out for it, albeit in small numbers. I thought this was dumb before I saw the movie and I didn’t change my mind after seeing it.  By me it’s better for audience members to understand what the actors are saying, but I’m not a supergenius like Kushner or Spielberg. 

I hope others who see the movie will share their impressions here.

[California]

17 hours ago, dirac said:

When dubbing is done with care it can be highly effective and IMO preferable in many circumstances to inferior “real” vocals. Not all dancers can sing and vice versa. Rita Hayworth, a fine dancer, could not have starred in musicals without the aid of dubbing. Catherine Deneuve was dubbed in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and to this viewer it was a good deal – the dubbing was convincing and I got to look at Deneuve for two hours.

If I understand correctly,  the controversy in the 1961 WSS resulted from (1) the actors rehearsed and recorded their songs, but were not told they wouldn't be used and (2) the actual singers were not included in the credits. With our rapid-fire communication channels nowadays, producers must know the truth will eventually come out. The problem of failure to credit happened more recently in Flash Dance and Black Swan, as we all well know.

[dirac]

People should get credit for their work and it's nice for actors to do their own singing if their voices are adequate, which isn't always the case and the actors themselves may not realize or accept that. (I have no idea whether that was the case with the original WSS.)

As an audience member I like to hear a score well sung and if the star you've got in hand can't sing or has a voice inadequate to the demands of the score, by all means dub.

 

[volcanohunter]

Perhaps it wasn't the best format, but I finally got around to the film on a plane. I found the photography ponderous, the dialogue pompous, and I thought Mike Faist was completely unconvincing as a gang leader. But that's always been the Achilles' heel of WSS.

I lasted 18 minutes, before I gave up during the first scene between Tony and Riff, primarily because I couldn't listen to Faist's thin, nasal voice for another second. Having to listen through headphones probably made it worse. 

Edited June 10, 2022 by volcanohunter

[Barbara]

I have no memory of that SNL skit - hilarious! Thanks volcanohunter! 

[ABT Fan]

Omg, that SNL skit is a hoot! Yes, thanks for posting.

Volcanohunter, I haven’t seen the new film but your comments are exactly how I felt about La La Land. I made it through about 10 minutes, which was 10 minutes too long.