If you haven’t been lured by the names of Spielberg and Tony Kushner, seduced by the handsome faces of the posters, and paid $25 to walk into the movie theater to watch the latest movie version of “West Side Story”, congratulations, you have saved another money for dinner.
If you have already bought your tickets, made an appointment with your beloved girl or guy, and are going to use the aphrodisiac melody of “Tonight, tonight” to set your life in one song tonight, then I’m sorry, you are not only for the year-end luxury that Hollywood co-branded Broadway grandly launched The cold rice set contributed his modest efforts, and also successfully ruined a night that should have been beautiful and unforgettable.
What a sacrifice of the small self to achieve the international humanitarianism of the big self, applause.
So here comes the question: when faced with such a speechless remake, how can we prevent a good night from being completely ravaged by a bad movie?
Hopefully, this “West Side Story” guide will help you relieve the stares at each other after the film ends.
01 Overturned, this is not the first time
The first thing you need to know is that this isn’t the first time “West Side Story” has appeared on the big screen. The original musical premiered in 1957 and was a huge success.
However, “West Side Story” didn’t win that year’s Tony Award for Best Musical. They lost to another classic musical “The Music Man”.
By the way, the Broadway revival “The Music Man” starring Hugh Jackman is scheduled to begin previews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway on December 20, 2021.
Coincidentally, the Winter Garden Theatre happened to be the theater where the 1957 version of “West Side Story” was performed.
In 1961, a film based on the stage version of “West Side Story” hit the big screen and won the Best Picture Oscar the following year.
If you boost, then when you see the drugstore owner Valentina appear on the screen, you must take a deep breath and make a “tsk tsk” sound.
Then, if it happened, he sighed with emotion: “Beauty is easy to get old.”
Yes, the famous grandmother Rita Moreno plays Valentina, the proprietress of the pharmacy, in the new version of the film.
The character was male in the original 1957 musical, and the character’s name was Doc.
In the 1961 film version, Moreno played the role of Anita, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1962.
Moreover, she is the third Grand Slam winner in history to win all four “EGOT” awards (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tonys), and the first Latino to win this honor.
Can you imagine that grandma is 90 years old?
In the more than half century that followed, “West Side Story” has undergone numerous revisions and remakes.
Before this movie version, the most eye-catching should be the Broadway revival in early 2020.
Very unfortunate, that time also overturned. The reason for the rollover was that the star was involved in a sexual assault scandal.
After the show started in February 2020, one of the leading actors, Amar Ramasar, was revealed to have illegally distributed nude photos of fellow actors during the New York City Ballet.
Although it was far less serious than the incident in Room N, it was enough to attract a large number of protesters to gather outside the theater door on the opening night, shouting “#MeToo” slogans.
Then, there is the epidemic.
Finally, after 24 official performances, the work directed by Ivo van Hove, a famous Belgian theater director, announced that it had stopped work, and would not return even if the theater reopened.
02 What could I do to save you tonight, my love?
“West Side Story” is, apparently, Shakespeare’s “Roméo Juliette.”
In “West Side Story,” the Montagues and Capulets of Verona become two teenage gangs in New York City, Romeo becomes America’s Tony, and Juliet becomes Maria, a Puerto Rican immigrant.
The balcony tryst in the play also turns into a dilapidated fire escape on New York’s Upper West Side.
Of course, these are obvious.
To pretend to be layered, you need to know the five pitches and rhythms at the beginning of the first line of the song “Somewhere” and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (Op. 73), the famous The fifth and sixth bars of the second movement in The Emperor correspond closely.
Going a little deeper, the three notes at the beginning of the song are exactly the same three-syllable motives that Tchaikovsky’s three-repeated cello excerpt at the end of “Tchaikovsky – Romeo & Juliet: Fantasy Overture” has.
Arguably, intentionally or not, “Somewhere” begins where Tchaikovsky’s overture ends.
As a reminder, “Somewhere” is the song Grandma Moreno hums as she sits in the drugstore near the end of the film.
In the original musical, this song takes place in the second act. Tony accidentally kills Bernado and then comes to Maria’s room. The young men and women in love dream of a beautiful world without hatred, no hostility, only love and peace.
In the fantasy of the two, they changed into soft and beautiful clothes and danced.
The singing of “Somewhere” came from the side of the stage, and the little friends joined them one after another. Everyone held hands and shouldered shoulders, all like little angels.
Ah, what a wonderful new world.
At this time, the dead Riff and Bernado appeared on the stage, facing each other with grim faces. The dream suddenly turned into a nightmare.
The duel begins to flash back as reality breaks in. Tony tried to stop Riff and Maria tried in vain to hold Bernado back.
A large-scale conflict broke out, people were killed everywhere on the stage, and the helpless and desperate little lovers could only hug each other tightly.
At last the vision dissipated, and the two tried to summon the last bit of courage to sing.
Then the lights came on and the two fell back onto the bed.
Looking at it this way, does the anger of “What the fuck? This guy just stabbed your brother to death and then you have sex with him?” when watching a movie can calm down a little bit?
After all, in the eyes of the two children, the world has collapsed, and only the other can save each other.
03 Is “West Side Story” Classic? It is very classic
If “West Side Story” were simply a copy of “Roméo Juliette,” you probably wouldn’t have had the chance to see so many remakes and remakes.
The original musical was created by composer Leonard Bernstein, screenwriter Arthur Laurents, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and choreographer and director Jerome Robbins.
Among them, Bernstein has been famous for a long time before “West Side Story”. He is a world-renowned conductor, classical composer, and music director of the New York Philharmonic.
By the way, if you have only heard of SEIJI OZAWA, Bernstein is the teacher of SEIJI OZAWA.
On the musical composition of “West Side Story”, Bernstein deftly uses dissonant melodies and staggered beats to correspond to the anger of the young people on the show.
So, if you think the music in it is “not great”, you’re right.
Most of the music of The Jets, which represents “America”, uses more angular jazz and Blues styles, while the more intense Latin style corresponds to The Sharks of Puerto Rico.
for example. For example, “Cool” sung by Jets adopts the style of Cool Jazz developed by Bepop Jazz in the 1940s.
Create a song called “Cool” in the style of “Cool Jazz”, isn’t it wow, cool.
Another example. For example, the famous song “America” draws on a Mexican folk dance style called Huapango, although as long as the attitude south of the border is not bad, it will definitely be approved by now.
In addition, there is usually an Exotic Number in Broadway musicals, which not only shows the singing and dancing skills of the actors, but also attracts the audience’s attention.
As far as Spain, Turkey and Russia, as far as Japan, China, Africa and Latin America, they have contributed brilliant exotic songs in Broadway musicals.
As you may have noticed, there is a slightly layered point here: the exotic song in “West Side Story” is called “America”.
Hmmmm, your product, your fine product.
The “America” scene from the 2021 film version of “West Side Story”.
Not just songs, Bernstein also composed five ballets himself, which was very rare on Broadway at the time.
At the time, it was even rarer for choreographer Robbins to be the director at the same time, which also made the dance of “West Side Story” no longer the conventional row standing on the thighs, but became a modern choreography with real artistic value.
Among them, the movement of one foot to the ground, one finger to the sky, and one finger to the ground has become an iconic famous scene.
In terms of lyrics, Sondheim, who finally joined the team, was only 25 years old at the time, and he was a complete young man.
In Broadway at that time, represented by Cole Porter, dazzling skills were the mainstream of writing lyrics, and all kinds of witticisms were written in hype.
Sondheim’s brilliance is to do the opposite.
For example, on Tony’s opening track “Something’s Coming”, Sondheim used short words like “click”, “shock”, “jingle”, “knock”.
He not only uses onomatopoeia to increase the audio-visual sense of the lyrics, but also provides a sense of rhythm similar to percussion.
In another mentioned song, “Cool,” Sondheim uses street slang such as “stay cool,” “stay loose,” and “easy does it.”
You know, the word “cool” was a very underground word in the 1950s. Otherwise Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1959 poem “We Real Cool” would not be so avant-garde.
Here’s a simple punch: Sondheim repeats the name “Maria” exactly 30 times on the song “Maria,” a record for the number of times a single name is repeated on any song.
Related Post: “West Side Story” recreates the song and dance with a rich singing play that turns a classic into a classic.
04 It’s not that the story is getting old, it’s that the person who rereads the story is getting old
The four main creators of the original musical are all curved.
That’s why the aforementioned “Somewhere” has long been the theme song that brings tears to everyone’s eyes in American gay circles.
But in fact, there is no strong homosexual element in the original musical.
So Kushner, who wrote “Angels in America,” one of the greatest works of gay drama of the 20th century, changed the play’s female character, Anybodys, into a trans character.
If you agree with what the mainstream American media is proclaiming, and think this is a huge step forward, then you can only wish you good luck.
Didn’t he realize that the tearful scene at the end of the film after Anybodys was recognized by the fraternity touched the entire LGBTQ+ community?
Although this is no longer a question of political correctness, but of the brain, it doesn’t make any sense for us to boost to criticize whether Spielberg and Kushner were kidnapped by ideology.
The real point is: where did this 2021 movie version of “West Side Story” fail?
Start with the original Anybodys. When the little character came out, the stage cues described it as “a scrawny little girl with clothes that sadly imitated the Jets gang.”
Does this remind you of the “little followers” who were behind your older brothers and sisters when you were a child, eager to grow up, and eager to be recognized?
They also want to become “cool”, embrace youth and life like those boys and girls who grew up first, even if they fight or kill.
Don’t forget, “West Side Story” is a love story in a racial context, but it’s also a story about youth.
The characters here, like Anybodys, are eager to mature, eager to be independent, confused and confused, so they pin all their hopes on friendship and love.
However, like every youth story, irreversible catastrophe will always be caused inadvertently, and life will gradually go out of control.
Therefore, the audience will be attracted by the plot in the frivolous playfulness and real cruelty, and sit still.
If you saw that the actors on the screen were all fourteen or fifteen year olds with pimples and pimples, would you still feel the same?
Just imagine that in the original musical, when you saw a group of teenagers pretending to be gangsters in the opening scene and making a slapstick, wouldn’t you be so embarrassed by that kind of “middle two” that you could only laugh?
When you see a joke and actually see blood, don’t you frown?
For example, in Maria’s appearance, when you see her begging Anita to lower the neckline of her dress, don’t you think of the self-righteous sexy pretending to be an adult?
When you see Tony and Maria in the bridal shop where she works, pulling mannequins as parents, and the wedding ceremony between games, wouldn’t it be funny and cute?
“West Side Story” needs to insert the knife of the adult world into the hot-blooded chest of the teenager, and the audience will be stabbed in the soft place.
The movie version of “West Side Story” in 2021 will fail because it is too real, it fails because it is too serious, it lacks the sense of playfulness of children playing at home, and it fails because it does not understand what “non-mainstream” means.
After all, when creating the original musical, Bernstein, Laurents, Robins are only in their 30s, and the youngest Sondheim is only 25 years old.
The rhythm of the original work is tight, and the singing and dancing segments are linked one by one. Like an ignorant teenager, it does not give the audience any respite at all.
The new version has added a lot of so-called literary dramas, and the natural rhythm has been dragged out stinky and long.
After all, Spielberg and Kushner are both nearly 140 years old. As people get older, there will naturally be more nonsense.
It’s not that the story is getting old, it’s that the person who rereads the story is getting old.
Related Post: From the big scene “Jaws” to the small love “West Side Story”, Spielberg’s soul crosses the border.
