This afternoon I finally had the guts --- no, the need --- to go out and watch a movie on the big screen.
Although I had sat as a juror of a festival and had seen eight movies inside a small cinema, the audience was controlled as I remained quite assured that it was safe.
Cinemas are confined places with recirculated air --- and somehow, the paranoia in me says that no amount of assurance of disinfection, proper ventilation and all other protocols and precautions can completely assure fully-vaccinated me that it is already safe to spend more than two hours in a room full of strangers.
There are some movies you can watch with relative contentment on your tv screens or even your computer monitor. But heavens, I will never ever watch a film on my IPhone or IPad. If I am still the sort who goes to Fully Booked to buy a traditional tome with my favorite bookmarkers, then the very idea of watching a movie on a portable miniscule screen is nothing short of sacrilege for me. This is not to mention by unforgiving astigmatism to deprive me of such options.
So I finally decided that it was time to watch Steven Spielberg's reimagining of the 1961 classic West Side Story at the nearest theater in a mall nearby.
On a Saturday afternoon, I entered the movie house and I was exhilarated --- as I was depressed.
I was ecstatic because for the price of four hundred pesos (mahal na talaga ang manood ng sine) I had the entire movie house all to myself. Literally.
This was like I purchased an entire block screening for a moderate sized cinema --- and I was literally all alone enjoying the screening. I was somewhat afraid that the management would cancel the showing because I was apparently the only one to purchase a ticket for that time slot on a Saturday afternoon.
As much as I was ecstatic because I was assured that there was no threat of any human specimen introducing Omicron to my temporary sanctuary, I was also painfully saddened.
I was saddened by the fact that it has come to this: the New Normal was not at all normal because nobody was returning to cinemas --- for reasons that I understood because I felt the same way just hours before.
Fact: because of the forbidding price of cinema tickets and the lingering threat of the pandemic, people are still shying away from theaters. It will take a lot of convincing for people to go back to how and what it was before. And, uh, there is Netflix, Viu, Vivamax, WeTV, Upstream, HBOGo, Disney+, IWant, etc. etc.
What even saddened me more was that Steven Spielberg's reimagining of West Side Story was nothing short of a master wielding his wand to a classic and redefining it as his own. It pained me to think that something this good was not winning the audience it deserved because rarely do they make films like this anymore.
Even in the U.S., West Side Story yielded an extremely disappointing box office response for reasons that ranged from the audience disinterest in musicals as a genre or the presumption that this specific musical was already dated and irrelevant to the audience of 2022. The millennials and the Gen Z's have never heard of the 1961 classic --- so the Boomers and perhaps some token Gen X'ers who would really be interested in seeing what Spielberg had done.
But I dare so much to disagree: In the Heights gathered a decent receipt --- and Spielberg's reinterpretation of the original material with the script by Tony Kushner tied up so many of the loose plot points of the 1961 original. And somehow, although it is close to impossible not to compare the original movie directed by Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins, this version gave greater clarity to the narrative. 2022 gave a back story to Tony --- and a character to Bernardo as a boxer rather than just being a bored Puerto Rican with an ax to grind against Gringos.
The Kushner script made us understand the battle for territoriality between the fighting gangs --- the Sharks and the Jets.
We are brought to a social issue which is as important today as it was in the half a century ago --- of poor people being displaced in the gentrification of certain areas of the cities or the undercurrent of racial discrimination against immigrants by the threatened white supermacists. The battle being fought for by the characters in the film are still here today especially with the recent developments in the United States where racial equality has become more of a campaign tag line (diminished to lip service) rather than it is part of a celebrated ideology.
And maybe that is what is so painful to see in this musical: it is almost an impossible feat to recreate and reinterpret so many classic songs and iconic production numbers. Yet Spielberg succeeds ...and exceeds.
Yes, Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the star crossed lovers of the 1961 production can never be erased nor removed from the collective memory of popular culture --- but Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgort (not dubbed but singing with their own voices) gave a totally different embodiment of Romeo and Juliet in the slimy sidestreets and tenement housing of New York City at that time. Yes, Rita Moreno and George Chakiris will forever be the Anita and Bernardo of this musical --- but when Ariana DeBose and David Alvarez update these characters, a new life is breathed into their personas --- making them more human and making one understand the whys and hows of their passionate relationship. Then there is Mike Faist as Riff who gave more depth and substance to the leader of the Jets than the original film, making us understand better the depth of friendship he shared with Tony --- and why a man desperately trying to change his ways will kill for a fallen friend.
OK, enough. I felt bad that I was all alone in a movie house watching this film.
I was all alone literally crying --- despite the fact that I have seen the 1961 original about ten times or more as viewing it on DVD has become a guilty pleasure.
I felt bad that it is not getting the audience it deserves --- as I hope every student and lover of cinema can find the time (and courage) to watch it on the big screen because Spielberg just gave us another master class in quality commercial filmmaking. If only for the camerawork of Janusz Kaminski, the choreography of Justin Peck and the vision of the filmmaker in reinterpreting a classic --- then grab your face masks and go to the cinema to watch this celebration of film art.
When Rita Moreno, the original Anita returns to the musical as a new character Valentina, sings the signature song of the musical Somewhere --- live and not pre-recorder, my heart broke into a million pieces.
This is why I love movies. This is why I want to make movies. Even if I cried all alone in the movie house.
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