Spielberg can still make magic with a camera. The cinematography, the lighting… many shots evoked the golden age of cinema, bathing the actors in light that makes them shine or shimmer, conveying emotion as well as their acting does. And the cast, for the most part, are excellent. Zegler is a breakout. DeBose lives up to an intimidating legacy with aplomb, radiant and charming in her highest moments and heartwrenching and righteous at her lowest. Speaking of that legacy, Rita Moreno is a legend who brought me to tears; she takes a song that felt simplistic and sappy and infuses it with decades of hard won experience and worn down hope. And Alvarez and Rivera infuse what were stereotypical roles with humanity.

So much care was taken to update this story. Anita gets a little more closure. The Sharks get more screen time. Class and race are put into sharper focus. And the choreography invokes the original while being fresh. Most of the music and lyrics still don’t stand out for me, but they’re working with what they have. And sequences like the America number elevate them. Most of all, I appreciate the attempt to represent Latinos so fully. In The Heights excluded the darker skinned; this gives them their due. The biggest slight against the film is Elgort. I appreciate the attempt to give Tony more depth and edge, something he lacked in the original. But he lacks the conviction of the other actors, and his crimes make the romance with Maria even more awkward and unhealthy than it originally comes off as. He feels almost predatory, and Bernardo nails him dead-on when he says it feels like he’s using Maria to feel new and better; she’s a fixation, a symbol.

Still, West Side Story is an event, and a great one at that, taking a story with flaws and sanding them out to make it one I enjoy much more.