Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: "Chatty" West Side Story | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 10:26 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
| In reply to: re: "Chatty" West Side Story - AnObserver 09:16 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
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| I agree it wasn't entirely fleshed out to a point of making clear sense within the premise of the musical they were adapting... But I would compare it, as I assume they did, to people who have LGBTQ friends or family and still vote against our rights and protections and are afraid of our "lifestyle" or agenda... or the same for white people who have a black person they claim to love but compartmentalize that when it comes to how they see and treat other poc and how they vote. People are good at compartmentalizing. Perhaps the Jets saw Valentina as one of the few Puerto Ricans they were comfortable with, who wasn't try to take their territory and push them out, or see them as hoodlums (even if they act as that). Or maybe they do not see themselves as racist against Puerto Ricans, just as against what they see as people with less claim to their home turf who threaten the world they've known. They were part of communities who were dismissed or oppressed (as Irish, Polish, etc)... but can't see how they're doing the same thing. I don't think the new movie, or all its added dialogue and context, fleshed this out enough for what they needed... but... i don't think it's entirely not there. |
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| re: "Chatty" West Side Story | |
| Posted by: AnObserver 11:02 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
| In reply to: re: "Chatty" West Side Story - Chazwaza 10:26 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
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| The lieutenant tells them they're from those oppressed groups, and that most of the people in those groups worked hard and got out of the ghetto. The parents of these guys are bums or unlucky and their kids are "white trash." That's part of the verbosity of the film, but in a film, that's okay, I think, because a film is less a "fantasia" than a stage show with a "dream ballet." Of course there are some films that are fantasias, but I wouldn't call this one or the 1961 film fantasias. |
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| re: "Chatty" West Side Story | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 11:39 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
| In reply to: re: "Chatty" West Side Story - AnObserver 11:02 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
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| The parents of these guys are bums or unlucky and their kids are "white trash." In the stage play, this is alluded to in dialogue too, but differently, with Shrank insulting the parents right to the Jets' faces. It's not spelled out the same way as in the new film, but I think it's implied that these aren't happy families in general at all. And of course in "Krupke" there are similar allusions. |
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| re: "Chatty" West Side Story | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 10:52 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
| In reply to: re: "Chatty" West Side Story - Chazwaza 10:26 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
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| Perhaps the Jets saw Valentina as one of the few Puerto Ricans they were comfortable with, who wasn't try to take their territory and push them out, or see them as hoodlums (even if they act as that). Valentina, though, does make it clear to Tony that she's hardly a fan of Riff. But then again, we could question Doc's feelings in the stage show - he's clearly not pro-hoodlum, but he does seem to put up with the Jets hanging out there. (Until the attempted rape of Anita, that is - and I would agree that I was very surprised that Valentina didn't kick the Jets out of the shop the same way Doc does in the show.) |
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| re: "Chatty" West Side Story | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:28 am EST 12/30/21 | |
| In reply to: re: "Chatty" West Side Story - Chromolume 10:52 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
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| I think we might reasonably surmise that Doc is a bit afraid of them. Also, I think it's not necessarily clear how often they hang out there. I think it's also quite possible that he saw most of them regularly in the store when they were kids, and he may have had fondness for most or all of them from that time. And it seems that the Jets may have seemed fairly harmless until pretty recently. I think we may also be able to read a bit into Doc clearly have been written as Jewish. The role was created by an actor who had been blacklisted. Not that the audience would have necessarily known the latter, and that actor didn't stay with the show all that long, but I think we can perhaps glean from these things that Doc was meant to be seen as someone who leans left, that he is what Archie Bunker would have called a bleeding heart liberal, and he may even have hoped he might have a positive influence on them when he saw them starting to go in a violent, borderline criminal direction. And then he saw he was wrong. I think all of these things, or some combination, might be part of an actor's choices, but his being a bit (or more than a bit) afraid of them by itself is quite enough. |
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| Exquisite film | |
| Posted by: peter3053 02:38 am EST 12/26/21 | |
| In reply to: re: "Chatty" West Side Story - Chromolume 10:52 pm EST 12/25/21 | |
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| I think the new movie is beautiful and deeply affecting, in spite of the slight disjunction between the more realistic dialogue and the still heightened musical material. I think one could count on four and a half fingers the moments that could be improved; for example, slightly sending up the start of "Maria", as if they didn't trust the material (yes, we all know the story about the writing and Robbins' response to it); and trying to create false tension at the start of "Tonight" by having Tony on the plank; Anita's slightly off emotional dimension at the start of "A Boy Like That" (although she made up for it in spades as the tears flowed - I just thought her anger at the start needed to be teary anger as well - she should be trembling with conflicted feelings from the start ... anger and grief altogether. Also, the pull back of the camera at the end of that number as the girls looked out was stagey, something the film avoided so well the rest of the time.) But the film was gripping and the tragedy terrible to relive. I thought "One Hand One Heart" and the setting for it, and especially her singing in it, was sublime. And all the ideas in the "America" sequence were startlingly to the point. And they did what I expected re "I Feel Pretty" ... using a word from the song in one of the department store advertisements to suggest where Maria got her added lyrical sophistication from in the number. (I thought the word would be "charming" ... it was another. So many wonderful and painful and powerful things ... you felt the power the show would have had originally. An intense and beautiful experience. And it's hard seeing it with a covid mask on ... wiping nose and tears gets difficult ... and nobody wants to be near a sniffle!!! |
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| re: Exquisite film | |
| Posted by: AnObserver 10:00 am EST 12/26/21 | |
| In reply to: Exquisite film - peter3053 02:38 am EST 12/26/21 | |
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| I kept thinking how much better it would have been if Fosse had directed it. We would have seen the dancing and the editing, not just the editing. And he would have found the characters and story and mood in the editing. Now "Cool" is camera choreography (and editing) around a gun. "Cool" in the 1961 film is one of the highlights. The new version has very little dancing. | |
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| re: Exquisite film | |
| Posted by: peter3053 03:50 pm EST 12/26/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Exquisite film - AnObserver 10:00 am EST 12/26/21 | |
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| Fosse, yes, but he may not have succeeded with the simpler more delicate moments, the spiritual dimension of their love. I thought one of the things Kushner articulated well was the idea that, with love, one sees the essence of the person, not what they appear, not what divides; the best of human nature finds the best of human nature; and we see we are all one family. Because WSS is a tightrope act between realism of content and expressionism of style, every attempt to do it will wobble in places ... but it doesn't make it any less of an astonishing work of art. I think the use of Cool in this film worked in the new way, dramatically - the need for tony to stop the fight and certainly stop any chance of killing. I loved the way, too, the gun represented a larger dimension of the film, a reflection on the Cold War ("mutually assured destruction") - which seems to have been a part of the thinking in the original creation of the piece, and the era. |
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| re: Exquisite film | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 06:10 pm EST 12/26/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Exquisite film - peter3053 03:50 pm EST 12/26/21 | |
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| I had the opposite reaction: in this version of "Cool", Tony has ample opportunities to throw the gun away and doesn't. Instead, he takes it from Riff, tells Riff not to use it, and then... dangles it there for Riff to take? Because, what, he's not really dedicated to keeping the peace? Because he's so torn between these two worlds that he can only halfheartedly attempt to prevent the apocalypse? (Which, that latter version maybe could work, but it could have used a clearer staging to tell that story). "Cool" in the film is one of a string of moments that turn Tony from a hapless guy caught up in a difficult situation to a hot-blooded murderer who does indeed kill Maria's brother both viciously and intentionally. It makes for a more complicated drama, but for me it undercut the ending: this time around, I was thoroughly in agreement with Anita and felt like the smartest thing Maria could do would be to let Tony leave without her. |
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| re: Exquisite film | |
| Posted by: peter3053 06:49 pm EST 12/26/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Exquisite film - Singapore/Fling 06:10 pm EST 12/26/21 | |
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| I'd have to see it again, but isn't Tony trying to get Riff to see reason and make the choice himself not to use the gun; in other words, it wasn't just about the gun, but about changing an outlook. Also, I think the gun got back in the hands of the gang and so the latter part of the dance was trying to get it back when the earlier strategy clearly hadn't worked... I think. By the way, do you notice how, years later, Toby was cornered by the police at the end of Sweeney, although he was the least responsible for the killings, and, in a similar way (not the same) Chino at the end of WSS? And both shows had chase sequences towards the end. Some tropes endure.... |
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