A pandemic life of semi-isolation has given me a renewed appreciation for living in a community. In between Covid surges this past year, three movies struck me as more relevant than they perhaps originally intended. IN THE HEIGHTS, BELFAST, and the new version of WEST SIDE STORY each showcased neighborhood communities and the generations that fostered them. Each also conveyed how new generations had their own dreams, and how fulfilling their new hopes demanded escaping the place that had originally nurtured them. Life is complicated.

IN THE HEIGHTS is the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 Tony-winning Broadway musical set in New York’s Morningside Heights neighborhood. Composed mainly of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, the Heights is a community of generations who came in search of the hope offered by the “American Dream.”

 
The 2021 film, directed by Jon M. Chu, portrays this sense of hope by radiating a joyful commotion of cultures. The movie declares that “the streets are made of music,” and dancers swirl to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vibrant music of rap, salsa, merengue, and “Broadway.”

 
But the sons and daughters of the generations who first came to the Heights have their own dreams. They see their parents slogging at menial jobs, and they want more.  The film’s hero, Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), is part of that generation. He owns the neighborhood bodega, but dreams of leaving New York City and opening a bar in the Dominican Republic. He has a crush on Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), who works in the local beauty salon and dreams of moving downtown and becoming a fashion designer. 

As a community, the Heights is also in turmoil, with rents increasing and gentrification threatening the basic identity of the neighborhood itself. But somehow, IN THE HEIGHTS remains a celebration–a declaration that dreams are a gift. The Heights created a community that nurtured the hopes of one generation, and gave new generations a path to find their own dreams.

Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST is a memoir of his childhood–notably, how his carefree life as a nine-year-old was shaken in 1969 when The Troubles invaded his neighborhood in Belfast. The movie begins in the present and is shot in color, but then shifts to 1969 and black-and-white footage that gives viewers a sense of viewing an album of old photos. At first, kids are playing soccer in the street, and we meet young Buddy/Kenneth’s parents and grandparents (including Judi Dench as the grandmother).

Branagh conveys an idyllic sense of place interrupted when a violent mob suddenly appears and The Troubles begin. Throwing Molotov cocktails into stores and setting cars on fire, the mob’s aim is to oust Catholics from this largely-Protestant neighborhood. The jolt of displacement lingers with Branagh, and his dreams take him away from Belfast. Happily for us, his path leads him to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and he becomes the singular creative figure we know today.

WEST SIDE STORY is an oddity among these three movies. Both in its 1957 Broadway and 1961 movie versions, the focus was on gang warfare between White Jets and Latin Sharks on New York’s West Side. In Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version, the only sense of neighborhood comes in its rampant destruction, as apartments and shops are destroyed to make way for Lincoln Center. 

The street gangs have morphed into angry tribes–the muddled intention being to lump them with today’s polarized culture rather than with Eisenhower’s gentler America.  We’re aware of this presentist approach from the beginning, when Spielberg has his camera linger on wrecking balls reducing neighborhoods into heaping piles of rubble.  (I doubt Leonard Bernstein, WSS’s composer and co-creator with choreographer Jerome Robbins, had thought of this angle:  Lincoln Center, after all, would be the new home for his orchestra, the New York Philharmonic!)

Spielberg doesn’t try to re-locate WSS in the 21st century the way Jonathan Larson did when creating RENT (1996), Larson’s updated version of Puccini’s LA BOHEME (1896).  Instead, Spielberg attempts to set the movie in “1957”—but it feels fake from the get-go.  The street traffic is filled with immaculate vintage cars that glow with shiny chrome bumpers.  Because the camera gets in very close to all of the actors’ faces, we notice that everyone has terrific teeth—really?! Street gangs in 1957 had orthodentists?! 

The most difficult barrier to a “1957” credibility, though, is Spielberg’s dark postmodern view. Members of his street gangs have no dreams—they are empty vessels, the human equivalent of the West Side’s wrecked neighborhoods. Spielberg portrays them as worthless and not worth saving.  
Tony escapes for a time, but is drawn back into the West Side’s vortex of destruction.  The only person to escape is Maria, who at eighteen is still innocent enough to have hope—she laughs at Anita’s injunction that her goal be to get married and move back to Puerto Rico. At the end when Tony is killed, Maria walks away. She alone will escape.

The most interesting character is Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the 1961 film and here plays Valentina, the widow of Doc. Her role has been filigreed to suit the star power she brings to this movie. Instead of Tony and Maria, Moreno sings “Somewhere,” and it fits beautifully as she describes her own family coming to America–and about the hope she still feels.

Jerome Robbins’ original choreography was as essential to WSS as Bernstein’s music. Robbins and Bernstein had first collaborated on “Fancy Free” in 1944,  and had brainstormed since the late 40s on what emerged as WSS in 1957.  Robbins’ choreography was exhilharating, and blended perfectly with Bernstein’s exuberant music in telling their story of the West Side.

Justin Peck’s choreography is never exhilarating. Instead, Peck’s movements meld with Spielberg’s portrait of people-and-place-as-wreckage. Their WEST SIDE STORY is a dirge, and about as far removed from the Bernstein/Robbins vision as life in 2022 is from a 1957 Chevy Bel Air convertible.

By Amy Henderson, Contributing Editor