West Side Story

West Side Story (1961) seems so dated and irrelevant that portions are painful to watch. For me, the scene in which Maria dances around the room singing "I Feel Pretty" is ludicrous. And though the dancing is superb, the scene in which the Sharks dance to express their anger and frustration over the death of Bernardo is a patronizing, insipid moment. Is this how the young really express and feel grief? The Gap commercial based on this scene is as effective as the scene itself. The commercial strips away the issues of ethnic experience and violence and focuses only on the tight, firm bodies of the young as they dance and gyrate. The point is that the scene is only dance and music and physical bodies to begin with—its essence has nothing to do with the immigrant experience and violence—it is all spectacle, no substance.

How appropriate is it now in 2007 for a musical film to address the problems of Puerto Rican immigrants through song and dance, especially song and dance predicated on the assumption that assimilation is what these immigrants seek and need? As sympathetic and tender as the film seeks to be, it stereotypes, sentimentalizes, and condescends. On the one hand it suggests that the immigrants seek the apotheosis of the American Dream, but on the other hand with the deaths of the two lovers it suggests that Dream is forever out of reach. Violence and ethnic conflict stand in the way. Is this because the odds against the immigrants are too great, or is it because the Dream isn't for immigrants to begin with? Well, Sondheim and Bernstein would certainly not accept the latter opinion, and in fact I don't think the film makes this assumption either, but the film seems such an anachronism in 2007 that it's easy to imagine a young audience coming to that conclusion.

The scene where Tony and Maria sing "One Hand, One Love" to each other might have seemed genuine and heartfelt in 1961, but now it comes across as cornpone, like the scene in Blue Hawaii, when Elvis sings a love song to his fiancée's grandmother. Does anyone take either scene seriously?

The film's idealization and idolatry of the young seems dated as well. Did we ever feel like Tony and Maria feel at that age? Today the young seem either jaded and co-opted, or bitter and lost. How deeply would they identify with the gangs and the girls in this film? Both in its treatment of Puerto Rican immigrants and of the young in general, the perspective of this film betrays itself: produced and directed by men no longer young and who are not themselves Puerto Rican—what the film shows is what they believe the Sharks and the Jets feel, what they imagine the young characters of this film feel--not what they know, because they don't. The film is sympathetic to its characters, but also patronizing and at worst cloyingly sentimental.

I try to suspend my disbelief, my 2007 sensibilities, with this film. I want to like West Side Story. Bernstein's score is beautiful. "There's a Place for Us" is one of the wonderful iconic songs from the 1960s. "America" is a great song as well. The dancing is impressive. I enjoy musicals, and, technically, this should be one of the best. But I can't suspend the 2007 perspective. The social context and the date of this musical trump all. West Side Story is a perfect example of a film that many once would have claimed as a classic, but that today is better left dusty and forgotten on the shelf.