West Side Story (2021)

Para Siempre

or

"Keep Looking for Better"

 

Why re-make it you ask? The original's a classic.

 

Yes, a flawed classic that we've become blind to. Robert Wise's 1961 version is beautiful to look at, technically stunning, the dancing is amazing, the music is always good, and Natalie Wood's gorgeous. And Rita Moreno. And Rita Moreno.

 

But, everybody's too old. Too clean. It feels like play-acting (certainly play-fighting). The Sharks are, for the most part, white guys in tan make-up, as is Russian Natalie Wood's Maria. And no one believes Richard Beymer for a second. Handsome guy, sure. But not for a second. Then, the story-line has always had issues, particularly in its hysterical third act. It did on stage, and even trying to correct it in the movie didn't work.

 

So, yeah, it needed to be done. And Steven Spielberg (who loved the original) has been wanting to re-make West Side Story since he was sixteen. Sometimes, when you hear a factoid like that, it's a case of being careful what you wish for. A Spielberg version of it would (one would think) at least be an interesting amalgamation of his youthful ideals with his more mature film-making stance of late, the "Gee-Whiz" Kid meets the Craftsman.*

So, how is it? Glorious. And calculated. If you're worried about the emotional "chill factor," the story and the music and the songs still punch you in the heart in the same way when you were an impressionable teenager and would cry over the punctuation of a love note (not enough "!!"'s) or the tragedy of "Romeo and Juliet" (do we really have to explain the piece's origins?). But, it's a different, less vacant world than the one of the '61 version. People look out the window and look at you crazy if you're singing by yourself in the middle of an alley-way. It's a cluttered, messier world and people talk over each other and speak Spanish in emotional dudgeon before being scolded to "speak English!"

It's messier and transitioning. New York's inner city looks like a war zone (It is). Gentrification is going on with blocks being demolished for an in-coming "Lincoln Center." The film starts with an overhead shot of rubble—including (grim foreshadowing smile here) fallen fire-escapes. Then, a Jet pops through a roof-door and the gang starts skipping down the street (not in Jerome Robbins-tight choreography) carrying paint cans. Kicking over a "Man Working" sign, it's apparent they're on a mission, but first they have to leave a slum area in decay to a busy slum area where the people haven't given up yet.

It's smart, less random, and in its own way, sets the precedent for the whole strutting-dancing-fighting correlation that needs to be crossed for "West Side Story" to work. It ends up in a brawl, but no one is high-kicking each other, the punches crunch, one kid gets a nail through an ear-lobe, and there is blood.**
The point is made. This is going to be a tougher "West Side Story" with resentments about things other than turf. At one point, Jets leader Riff (a very good, very weasly Mike Faist) says "Ya know, I wake up to everything I know being sold or wrecked or being taken over by people I don't like" (just in case anybody accuses the movie of not being "relevant") and they're pegged by a New York city cop (Corey Stoll) as being just "slum clearance."

That's the milieu; how are the leads? Reviews I've scanned have problems with both of them, but I think that's wrong. For me, the biggest problem of "West Side Story" was always Tony. You're not sure what his motivation is, other than not to be part of the gang—while being part of the gang. Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have beefed up the character by giving him additional back-story. Here, Tony is just trying to stay straight: he's been in prison for a year for nearly killing a kid in a past rumble, sort of like John Wayne's Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man—he's haunted by his past actions—and now, he's out on probation, keeping his nose-clean, and working for Valentina (Rita Morena) running Doc's drug store in the old neighborhood. Tony is played here by Ansel Elgort, who's done great work in The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver. Elgort can dance, although he doesn't do much of it here, and he has a fine singing voice and isn't shy about hitting the high notes—if I have a complaint about him it's that he seems to be concentrating on the technical side of the singing rather than the acting. But, his Tony is interesting, the guy everybody looks up to (because he's a head taller than everybody) and he only gets MORE interesting once he meets Maria at the dance.

At first—the way Spielberg stages it—she's just someone he sees out of the corner of his eye dancing with another guy, enjoying herself (it's her first dance of the night). Then, he walks the outside of the dance floor, stalking, riveted, and it's almost like that attention is what makes Maria notice him. And from that moment on, he's like Brando's Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront—completely gob-smacked, struck stupid by "the thunderbolt" to the point where he'll do anything—anything—for her. And that previous internal conflict just goes away. "All my life, it's like I'm always just about to fall off the edge of the world's tallest building. I stopped falling the second I saw you." So, she's gotta be something special.

And Rachel Zegler is. There's something preternaturally attractive about her and not in any traditional way. Her eyes are Disney Princess-huge—of COURSE, they've cast her in the live-action Snow White—sunk deep in her skull and they cut across her entire face. She's doll-like, unnatural, but in the way that sinks into the alligator cortex, turns into goo, and makes you want to buy a puppy. And Maria, the character, is a tough sell, with fast emotional transitions and, if done wrong, can seem like the architect of such chaos that one has no sympathy for her, not even at the end. Some wickedly tough songs, too. Fortunately, Zegler is up to the task, and Kushner has given her far more spine than previous versions. You want these kids to work it out and get out of this dump.

Spielberg takes advantage of every moment—and sometimes just beats of music—to tell his story. There is sure to be some grousing about musical choices and positionings, particularly how the song "Cool" is used—it's moved in transitions from stage to screen to screen, and here it's Tony's number (which, given his role as thwarted peacemaker, works)—and there is one song that I was horrified when it started to come up in the position that it did, but it gives a needed distraction after the big rumble, and raises emotional goal-posts setting up a particularly savage transition for Maria's character to make. 

And some may disagree how the work's most famous piece, "Somewhere," is used—and who it's given to—but the choice is an apt one, making its meaning more ethereal and more universal. Emotionally it feels right.

And the big show-pieces are wonders. The show-stopper is always "America" ("I like the island Manhattan/Smoke on your pipe/and put THAT in") and Spielberg opens it up in keeping with maintaining as much location work as possible. I've made no mention of David Alvarez as Bernardo, the boxing leader of The Sharks or his girl Anita, who is played by Ariana DeBose, and that oversight may be criminal. The two are meant to be more flashy than Maria and Tony and they are the life of the party, all flash and dash, smirk and flirt. Their spontaneity can't be contained, so instead of staging the number on a limited rooftop, it moves from back-alleys to city-streets, whirling and sashaying and running at full gallop until not only the show stops but New York traffic as well. The exuberance is contagious, but freer and feels more risky, more dangerous, more alive.

Why re-make it, you ask? (I dunno. Why remake "Romeo and Juliet?") Because with new interpretations come improvements—or not. It's the chance one takes with producing art. They're not going to stop re-staging it in theaters, nor should they. But, if one must cling to the original, there's always what author James M. Cain said when an associate (John Leonard) criticized a film-version of a novel of his: "They haven't done anything to my books" (pointing to his study) "They're still there on the shelf. They paid me and that's the end of it. They're fine." The original is still there—I have it on DVD—and naysayers can watch it anytime they want. I prefer this version, and I'll prefer it...until a better version comes along.

* Robert Wise, when he made West Side Story, had been making films for 17 years. Spielberg has been making them for 47 years. Hmm.

** Later, Spielberg will have a fight where he borrows a few set-ups from a brawl in A Clockwork Orange. He's not kidding around. 

Baby Driver

Nowhere to Run To, Baby. Nowhere to Hide..."
or
"In This Business, the Moment You Catch Feelings, You Catch a Bullet"

The new film by Edgar Wright—he of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs the World and his first film since his extended work on what would be Ant-Man—is called Baby Driver and could almost be called a new genre, the musical crime drama. Oh, there've been things like Guys and Dolls and even the weird Bugsy Malone, but they're of the dialogue-song-dialogue-song variety. Baby Driver is a film built around a long string of pop tunes, not unlike the technique George Lucas used in American Graffiti, creating an atmosphere of music that the characters walk through, informing their steps and slyly commenting on events, like a prerecorded Greek Chorus.

The music starts a few seconds into the film, with the flick of an Ipod dial and the introduction of Jon Hamm, Eliza Gonzales and Jon Bernthal each one cut to on a double beat, then exiting from the car that has rolled into the very first shot eclipsing the bank that is the intended target of a bank-robbery. The driver, Baby (Ansel Elgort, pretty much unrecognizable from the part he played in The Fault in Our Stars, which was mostly verbal—here, he rarely talks and it's a performance of movement and attitude), dressed like Han Solo, sits in the car and waits, engine off. He puts in the earbuds of an Ipod.

And, then this stone-face act he's had disappears; to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion song "Bellbottoms," he starts to bop in the driver's seat. He lip-syncs, he jives, he shimmies, follows the drum-beats on the dashboard and the car-door, air-guitar's and air-violin's. He's quite the spectacle...to the point where you wonder if it's reality or not; maybe he's gone off in his own little world that has nothing to do with sitting in a hot-red 20007 Subaru Impreza WRX, waiting for shots to be fired and the sound of running feet. He won't here them, though, with the music going full-blast in his head.

When the trio of robbers does exit, however, that's when the song kicks into high gear and the film along with it. Bernthal gives the signal to go ahead and Baby jams it into reverse, the first of many instinctual moves that will have him careening through and against traffic on Atlanta streets to avoid pursuit. To say it is an amazing sequence, dangerous and thrilling (and damned ingenious) is not giving it enough credit. But, tie it in with the music as seamlessly as it does and you've got something that might be called "Extreme Ballet."

And that's before the credits, which is a brilliant little sequence done to Bob & Earl's "Harlem Shuffle." Baby is on a coffee run, ear-buds in place, bopping to the music, the activity of the whole street in time with the music and his weaving between light-posts and traffic—even street-signs and graffiti highlight lyrics as he makes his way on his journey. This is great stuff and the entire movie is filled with things like this, all in tune with Baby, who, unfortunately is about to have the best of times and the worst of times in his life.

Baby is a getaway driver for Doc (Kevin Spacey), a criminal mastermind with a rotating number of hoods, routinely setting up jobs in the Atlanta area, but with one consistent member of his squad—Baby is always the guy behind the wheel, a "young Mozart in a go-kart" (as Doc calls him) because nobody is better. Yes, he's odd, and the professional hoods he takes on his thrill rides are a bit distrustful of his idiosyncracies—the ear-buds and Ipod and perpetual music (which is explained by a constant tinitis, "a hum in the drum," which the music drowns out), the passive attitude, the dark-glasses, the relatively little talking, his youth—the professional hoods (who aren't exactly what you'd call "normal," either) find him an oddity, which makes putting their lives in his hands a risk. They make a display of busting his chops, which he just deflects.

"That's my "Baby.'" says Doc, proudly.

Which is the point.

It's also probably the most conventional part of the movie. Baby Driver is a heist movie and here's the audience participation part of this review: what is the most used trope about career criminal movies?

I'll wait.

It's the "last-job" scenario: the expert criminal decides that he's going to do that "one last (sometimes "big") job" so he can retire and live a lawful and "committed-to-a-significant-other" life. (See "Godfather Part III: Every time I try to get OUT, they pull me back in...!") Been there, done that—the comedy version AND the tragedy version—(Huston, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Dassin) et cetera, et cetera. They say that all the stories have been told (and there are a limited number of stories from which to draw on—how many depends on how generous whoever is pulling the statistics out of thin air is. What makes a great film is how the story is told, what it brings to the plot, how it fleshes it out. A lot of people have done the "last job" trope.

But, nobody's done this like Baby Driver.

Sure, the story feels familiar—he's gotten into this life to pay off a debt of some sort (we are never made privy to what), but it may have something to do with his deaf and handicapped foster-father, Joseph (CJ Jones). After that first job, Baby declares himself to Doc:

Baby: One more job and I'm done.
Doc: "One more job" and we're straight. Now I don't think I need to give you the speech about what would happen if you say no, how I could break your legs and kill everyone you love because you already know that, don't you? 

And then, the stakes get higher: before, it was just Joseph Baby had to worry about. Now, he has to worry about the girl who's been glimpsed previously on his coffee runs and is now a focus in his life, Debora (Lily James—whose entrance into his psyche is spelled out by the song she absent-mindedly sings when she passes him in the diner she's working at, Carla Thomas' "B-A-B-Y"*). The two meet casually, but both fall hard, and pretty soon they're sharing an Ipod together and a dream to get away from all this. That becomes Baby's goal, but before he can do that, he must protect everything he holds dear to make a clean break, except he falls under suspicion from the paranoid robbers who all begin to know each other a little too well—"Buddy" (Hamm), "Darling" (Rodriguez), the too-smart-for-his-own-good-(or-anyone else's) "Bats" (Jamie Foxx), and "Doc," who is not above making bad on his threats...especially when they find a mini-recorder on Baby, which he uses to make and mix his own songs in an autobiographical cassette-library. The gang think he's an informant, with the most obvious "wire" in the world—but it's just one more piece in what makes Baby Baby, and threatens to make his life un-spooled.

Back in my review of Alien: Covenant, I made a case that Ridley Scott was not much of a director—a great art director, sure, and a genius visualist in league with his cinematographers. Imagery over substance and certainly over story sense. You could make the case (a losing one) that Baby Driver suffers from the same weakness. But, what Scott lacks is obvious that Wright has: style...and one that meshes with his subject matter, no matter how different the subject matter. He will adapt to the source and fill that world with detail and tricks that inform and enhance the story and make it unique and surprising, no matter how familiar the basic structure of the story may be. That's real film-making...and real fun.

Want to see how choreographed this is?

Check out the graffiti on the walls aping the lyrics.

 An action/ chase scene where the action, shots, editing—even the sound-effects—are enhanced

by the background song: "Hocus Pocus" by Focus 

It's violent, but, man, this is intricate film-making.

* It's one of the subjects of their lives: "Baby" has a multitude of songs with his name in it (and even more with his real name); Debora—poor, disadvantaged girl—has only two.

 

The Fault in Our Stars

Dear Brutus 
or
Wasting Away (Again) in Augustus-World

Alvy Singer: [addressing the camera] There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." 

Annie Hall, 1977

I never read the book by John Green (but I want to now, which is as high a compliment as you can pay any film adaptation), so I can say I walked into The Fault in Our Stars without prejudice. With that lack of preparedness, I would not miss my favorite lines, or shake my head that the actor I imagined in my head while reading isn't performing the role. Any potential aspect that might be terribly missed or changed is unknown. My admiration for it is remarkably clear-eyed (no, I didn't cry, but was moved...more by the writing than the situations), and came away from it with a healthy respect, although it belongs to a genre I'm always suspicious of, and slightly cynical towards—the movie love story.

But The Fault in our Stars is about so many other things than love, even as it broaches so many aspects of it.  It is also about existence and the melancholy contemplation of its loss, as its young adult protagonists, very early in their lives, confront the thoughts and fears of someone who might be middle-aged or older. They are spinning through life far too fast, suffering through it, and sad that it will end so quickly.

Such small portions.

Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) has thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs. In remission, she is still scarred from the disease, dependent on supplemental oxygen to keep up her strength (which isn't much—it's a struggle going up or down stairs), a nasal cannula perpetually in her nostrils, more embarrassing than braces, dragging behind her an oxygen system like her own private black cloud.

She's depressed. Her Mom (Laura Dern, her best role in years) is worried. "Depression is not a side effect of cancer," says Hazel diffidently. "It's a side effect of dying" But, she is depressed, in ways she can't even tell her parents. "I'm a grenade!" she protests at a later point in the movie, capable of taking other people out, when she finally succumbs. This tears at her soul. She remembers the trauma of her parents when she was thirteen, a heart-beat from dying, and fears the next moment. She obsesses about a favorite book, "An Imperial Affliction," written by an expatriate recluse about a young girl with cancer, and her interest is in...what happens after to the other characters.

So, she is shuffled off to a cancer support group at a local church, led by a very earnest young man (Mike Birbiglia) who might not be the best choice to lead. One day, one of the group's members Isaac (Nat Wolff), who has lost an eye to cancer and will soon lose the other, brings along his friend Augustus West (Ansel Elgort) a former star basketball player in school, who's lost his right leg to cancer, but has a decidedly different attitude about life and the disease. He and Hazel lock eyes in the session in what one would call a reverse of a "meet-cute" (a staple of romantic comedies)—he surmises her with a smiling assumption; she parries with a cocked eyebrow challenge dialed all the way up to "Intimidate." They bicker wordlessly for a time, in a lovely display of story-telling without dialog. If they have one thing in common, it's that they think the support group is a crock.

The thing is, it's where they find the most crucial support they need—in each other.

Augustus is cocky ("I'm part cyborg, which is awesome?" he jokes at the group by way of introduction), winning, challenging—and with definite quirks that have been well thought-out to impress. He's a cancer patient who walks around with a cigarette in his mouth. The idea repulses Hazel: 

Hazel Grace Lancaster: Really? That's disgusting!
Augustus Waters: What?
Hazel Grace Lancaster: What? Do you think that is cool? Or something? You just ruined the whole thing.
Augustus Waters: The whole thing?
Hazel Grace Lancaster: Yes, this whole thing.
Hazel Grace Lancaster: Even thou you have freaking cancer, you are willing to give money to a corporation for a chance to acquire even more cancer? Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.

Augustus Waters: They don't kill you unless you light them. And I've never lit one. It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing. A metaphor.

Neat idea. As I said, well thought-out. But, Augustus' brave little smoking metaphor betrays an insecurity, and is its own kind of crutch. He'll never light a cigarette, but he'll depend on them just as much as if he smoked two packs a day. Augustus is a brave face. Hazel Grace is an old soul. Together they make one healthy person, staring into the abyss.

To say any more will betray a lot of really good stuff—better than you'd find in most young adult fiction—stuff that's quotable enough that it sounds like a cliche the moment it's out of somebody's mouth (one of them at the bottom of this is lovely, even if it's going to be on a Hallmark card within the year). You get the sense that these kids are kids, despite having a familiarity with the most tongue-twisting of medical jargon, and the philosophical world-view of a pensioner.

The script, out of Green, by way of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (who wrote two of my favorite "young adult" movies of the past few years (500) Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now) touches subjects and grazes metaphors (other ones) of these two kids trying to eke out an existence despite not only the traps of their bodily handicaps, but of the spirit, as well. It is a rare movie that considers the concept of survivor's guilt and builds a character arc around it that embraces life, the moment, and the preciousness of it all.

But, it is not a "weepie."

It's that smart.

"Okay"