The cast of this soon to be released musical are pulling no punches at throwing this now dead actress who starred in the original under the bus and then rolling over her grave with it.

West Side Story

Natalie Wood

Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ fixes the original film’s mistakes and delivers a perfect Maria

Spielberg’s “West Side Story” is beautifully shot and faithful to the original Broadway show and film. It’s also bold enough to finally feel authentic without succumbing to the pressures of catering to a monolingual audience.

A self-proclaimed die-hard fan of the musical since his parents brought home a record when he was 10, Spielberg delivers a smart update to the original, which corrects some of its blatant and ignorant racism directed towards the Latinx community.

Yes, to the casual fan, the 2021 film largely plays much like the original “Romeo and Juliet”-inspired tale as it tells the ill-fated story of star-crossed lovers Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort) whose infatuation causes a brawl to break out between feuding gangs — the Caucasian Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks in the backdrop of late 1950s New York City.

All of the songs are there (though fans will notice “Be Cool” is shuffled out of order) with the late Stephen Sondheim’s original lyrics intact (Surprisingly, no changes were made to “Officer Krupke”). That alone may make you wonder why anyone would bother touching a classic.

But the biggest shock is that the film doesn’t have subtitles. That’s on purpose.

If you’ve taken a Spanish course or two, there’s not much you can’t figure out with context clues. But there are a few small asides where non-Spanish-speaking audiences may miss out on a joke.

During the film’s virtual press conference, which Insider attended, Spielberg said the lack of subtitles was “out of respect” to all the people who do speak Spanish in the United States. Screenwriter Tony Kushner added during the press conference that “we’re a bilingual country.”

In the 1961 adaptation, Natalie Wood, a Caucasian woman playing a Puerto Rican, was confusing. That casting sent the wrong message to many young Hispanic children, of all shades, who wanted to see themselves in Maria but instead were given a white actress to idolize.

I too was confused, being a light-skinned, half Peruvian woman, who grew up with a single white mom. I never knew where I really fit in. As an added complexity, because I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish, I didn’t feel welcome around other Spanish speakers, who jokingly referred to me as gringa. Seeing Wood portray Maria didn’t help in my quest to find portrayals of culture onscreen. – Source


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