West Side Story Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

3. Tony Kushner's Screenplay Updates The Material For Today

Though this remake doesn't shift the story's setting forward to 2021, Tony Kushner script and Spielberg's filmmaking do nevertheless present a more enlightened, relevant portrayal of the narrative and characters for contemporary audiences.

The original was of course explicitly concerned with the racial and cultural divides that caused its central conflict, and even more of an effort has been made here to dig into the nuances of each side's grievances, yet without feeling like it's lecturing the audience.

Elsewhere, Tony is given a compelling backstory and specific motivation for wanting to avoid violence, while Maria is reimagined as a less virginal, more assertive character.

Spielberg also makes the mildly controversial decision not to subtitle any of the film's Spanish dialogue, though ultimately it's an interesting and successful choice which places both languages on equal footing.

More to the point, most of the spoken Spanish is ancillary dialogue, and that which isn't is largely repeated or otherwise explained in English.

While the original film has mostly aged incredibly well - brownface aside, that is - it's certainly welcome to see Spielberg and Kushner striving to give it a more progressive, modern-minded update.