'Directing a musical — and a version of a musical he’s loved since childhood — has shaken something loose in Spielberg. Why 'West Side Story,' why now? To watch this movie is to see and hear the answer.'
At the beginning of Steven Spielberg’s brilliantly directed “West Side Story,” the Jets whistle, snap their fingers and pirouette around New York, a city that looms and sprawls but is still nowhere big enough to contain their brash, combative energy. So far, so familiar.
As with most updates of beloved material, the mere fact of this movie’s existence has provoked its fair share of indignation. Some of the criticism has focused on Hollywood’s remake addiction, but more of it has to do with the troubling, complicated legacy of “West Side Story” itself, whose mashup of broad archetypes and reductive ethnic stereotypes has long been a source of contention.
Spielberg’s filmmaking, of course, is another language intuitive enough for any moviegoer to understand. It may be worth noting that America’s most popular director has never before directed an entry in what was once America’s most popular film genre, but that fact almost pales into insignificance given his instinctive sense of visual rhythm, proportion and kinetic flow, his gift for orchestrating moments that trigger near-Pavlovian bursts of feeling.
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