It’s chilling to consider that only 65 years since its conception, the musical twist on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet now plays second fiddle to a comic-strip superhero.
We were among only four people at an afternoon screening of Spielberg’s revamped West Side Story and it appears that after six years’ painstaking work and a 12-month delay due to COVID, his efforts have not been rewarded at the box office.
Even the clerk who served us on retirees’ Tuesday seemed unsure which film we wanted to see,
Then two hours and 36 minutes later, the only other guy present couldn’t resist referring to Robert Wise's multi Oscar-winning 1961 original.
“Good”, he muttered in broken English as we vacated the studio.
“Er, erm”, he added. “Natalie Wood”.
“Yeah!”, rejoined my husband, “That’s my wife”!
*****
Here in Israel, the movie’s Hebrew language title translates into English as Story of the Suburbs.
This leaves me wondering:
1. Whether local distributors were worried about ‘‘West Bank’ associations.
2. If, indeed, Israeli film makers could instead write their own tale using real events involving Arab intra-clan violence, revenge honour killings or an apparently unprovoked Jewish mob attack on an Arab in the city of Bat Yam as all-too-strong and plausible plotlines.
But let’s end on a high note.
*****
Yesterday it was thrilling to revisit the renowned dance village at Kibbutz Ga’aton, West Galilee, where first we viewed a group of Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company students in rehearsal and then squeezed into the crowded bijou Zichri Theatre to watch a KCDC 2 performance of Kaleidoscope, an original work by SuJeong Kim, with excerpts from Horses in the Sky by Artistic Director Rami Be’er.
The young dancers we saw are surely the stars of tomorrow. No wonder, then, that one of them remarked to us that she is acquainted with many cast members of the new film. And even less surprise that she then pointed at herself and added: “One day, me too”!
Credit: The pictures for this piece were snapped at Kibbutz Ga'aton by my husband, Brian Fink.
NATALIE WOOD
18 DECEMBER 2021