The rumble is on in the trailer for Steven… | Little White Lies

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The rum­ble is on in the trail­er for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story

26 Apr 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Young woman in white dress stands in a room with several other people in the background.
Young woman in white dress stands in a room with several other people in the background.
Ansel Elgo­rt and new­com­er Rachel Zegler lead the director’s delayed remake of the hot-blood­ed musical.

More than a year has passed since we first ran an item on the release of pro­mo­tion­al images for Steven Spiel­bergs West Side Sto­ry, then sched­uled for a release in Decem­ber of 2020. The pan­dem­ic scut­tled the film’s debut until this com­ing Decem­ber, a long wait dur­ing which the public’s expec­ta­tions have only grown – as a feast of pop­corn plea­sure and fine­ly honed Hol­ly­wood craft, it’s now the movie we’re count­ing on to bring back the movies.

Last night’s Oscar tele­cast brought the first peek at one of the major releas­es locked in for reopened the­aters in a vac­ci­nat­ed world. Those famil­iar with Robert Wise and Jerome Rob­bins’ 1961 adap­ta­tion of the Broad­way smash will be pleased to see Spiel­berg evok­ing the most fond­ly remem­bered images of the orig­i­nal, while adding his own lush, max­i­mal­ist spin to the material.

In 1950s New York, ten­sions flare between the Ital­ian-Amer­i­can street gang The Jets and their Puer­to Rican rivals of the Sharks, meet­ing for a rum­ble” that sees their shad­ows art­ful­ly join­ing one anoth­er in a giant lat­tice. Despite the enmi­ty between these two groups and the racial divide sep­a­rat­ing them, Jets leader Tony (Ansel Elgo­rt) and Sharks affil­i­ate Maria (Rachel Zegler) fall in love and set them­selves on a col­li­sion course with need­less tragedy.

No small task, tack­ling one of the most beloved movies of all time, but Spiel­berg and screen­writer Tony Kush­n­er appear to take a bal­anced approach, mea­sur­ing homage to the pre­de­ces­sor against inno­va­tion with an eye to the mod­ern. In the first few sec­onds, we see the graf­fi­ti declar­ing the Sharks’ slice of Span­ish Harlem as their own with the words THIS IS OUR PLACE”, a nod to the social ten­sions exac­er­bat­ed more pro­nounced in an increas­ing­ly con­scious present.

But the true joys of the film are sim­ple and imme­di­ate – the dress-swish­ing dance moves, the heady swell of romance at the gym­na­si­um mam­bo, the del­i­cate inti­ma­cy of our leads’ rare moment alone, dis­tanced only by a fire escape. The inevitable full trail­er will sure­ly place a larg­er focus on the music, an immor­tal score briefly heard here in the snip­pet of Some­where’. Like Tony and Maria, there’s a place for us, a time and place for us – name­ly, the local cine­plex, this winter.

West Side Sto­ry will come to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 10 December.

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