The "West Side Story" in theatres now isn't the movie you've seen before -- and that's a good thing.
The songs are largely the same, but the story is different in several notable ways -- especially when it comes to the movie's Puerto Rican characters. Zegler's been getting rave reviews for her performance. Still, not everyone is sold on the casting choice. And this time around, Moreno's observations weren't dismissed. She plays a new character written for this version, Valentina. She was an executive producer of the movie. And she regularly spoke with the cast about what it was like growing up as a Puerto Rican in America.
There, a professor of theatre history and acting pointed out the song's problematic lyrics as she questioned how Spielberg and Kushner planned to represent Puerto Ricans in the film. Kushner told the audience that the White, Jewish team behind the original story likely assumed the migration experience for Puerto Ricans was the same as it had been for their ancestors, who looked on the Old Country with disdain.
By paring down the lyrics, the new version sharpens the focus of the song to the debate over whether life on the US mainland is good or bad for Puerto Ricans, rather than dragging Puerto Rico and its people through the mud.Broadway composer and lyricist Lin Manuel-Miranda, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico, has said that for Latinos, "West Side Story" has been "our greatest blessing and our greatest curse.
In the 2021 film, Chino is going to school to be an accountant. Bernardo is a boxer who came to New York more recently. Anita is a seamstress who's saving money because she wants to open her own dress shop someday. Maria and her friends work on a cleaning crew at Gimbels department store. In fact, the very first song with lyrics that we hear in the remake is sung in Spanish. It's the Sharks' version of the Puerto Rican anthem "La Borinqueña," performed after police order them to leave a crime scene. And it wasn't in the original.Originally, the plot of "West Side Story" was conceived to focus on tensions between Jews and Catholics on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Rewriting the past to pretend we didn't see things differently back then.
Entertainment Entertainment Latest News, Entertainment Entertainment Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: nationalpost - 🏆 10. / 80 Read more »