Thursday, September 16, 2010

West Side Story

West Side Story
1961

Forbidden love is bad. It ends up hurting many people, including you.

But you know what? It makes for a fabulous story.

This is the beautiful, yet tragic story of Romeo and Juliet, set in New York City and with some gang drama thrown in. We have our American gang, the Jets, and we have our Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks. The Sharks are a bazillion times cooler, and a gazillion times more attractive, for the record. These two gangs hate each other with an intense passion.

So what of course happens? Tony, an ex Jet, and Maria, the leader of the Sharks Bernardo’s sister, fall in love. It was rather stupid of them if you think about it.

But they couldn’t help it. They saw each other at a dance and the world just stopped. Literally. But of course, as soon as they get together, their gangs attempt to break them up. But nothing can stop true love. Except maybe death, but we will get to that later.

The reason they were all together at the dance was because the Jets’ leader Riff wanted to challenge the Sharks to a rumble. They accept and meet later to establish terms of fighting. When this said fight happens, it does not go well. Riff is stabbed to death by Bernardo. Tony is enraged as he was Riff’s best friend, and in turn kills Bernardo.

Chino, the boy everyone wants Maria to love, runs to her to tell her what Tony has done. She at first does not believe him, but eventually accepts the truth. Does this make her feelings for Tony vanish? Of course not she’s a silly girl who is in love.
When you care about someone you hardly ever listen to rational thought or logic, like, “Hmm, maybe this guy is bad because he killed my brother.” Or “Maybe I shouldn’t go out with him because my best friend Rita doesn’t like him.” Or “Maybe I should run away screaming from this crazy man because he wanted to satanically slap my parents.” The last one doesn’t particularly apply to West Side Story, but it is still good to avoid such people.

Maria and Tony decide to run away together. They meet at a candy store, see the other, and start running towards each other. But Chino comes out with a gun and shoots Tony dead. It’s terrible. Maria then rants beautifully, that it was their hate for each other that killed Riff, Bernardo, and Tony, and the movie ends.

Cynical comments aside, I love this movie. It’s a musical, so that of course gives it huge bonus points from me. But here is the thing that makes this movie so completely spectacular. It’s choreography is AMAZING. I mean, besides the slight hilarity of gangs dancing like girls, this is so cool to watch. Jerome Robbins one a special award from the Oscars because of how brilliant this was.

The only complaint I have is the whole love at first sight thing. This is a completely ridiculous notion that only crazy people believe in. I would say no offense, but if you do believe in something as outlandish such as this, you deserve to have your feelings hurt.

But other than that slight minor detail, this movie was wonderfully made and enjoyable to watch.

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