‘West Facet Story’ and the Decline of the Movie Theater

What transpired? The enjoyment push has presented doable explanations. With new coronavirus variants emerging, individuals really do not truly feel comfortable in theaters. The viewers for musicals skews more mature, the demographic with most purpose to be timid. It is the casting: No one’s ever listened to of the stars. Ticket price ranges are too high. Men and women are out purchasing. Who would like to see a remake of a classic? It’s possible the audience for motion picture musicals is just around.

There is possibly anything to all of these. Two further ideas:

One particular is that some who’d be portion of the movie’s normal audience could possibly not have long gone because they assumed it would be woke since most of what arrives out of Hollywood is woke, and they practical experience wokeness as a kind of mental and moral harassment. Persons really do not want to see a thing they appreciate traduced, so they’d stay away.

But I feel there is a much larger and extra quick motive. Mr. Spielberg moreover terrific aged American film should really equivalent enormous blockbuster. “West Facet Story’s” unsuccessful launch tells us that we have undergone a elementary shift in how we look at flicks in The us. And the amusement industry should really see it for what it is. Several assumed as the pandemic unfold and the theaters closed that it would all snap again as before long as the pandemic was more than. People would flock back to do what they’ve been performing for extra than a century, not only out of pattern but tradition: They’d go out to the videos. But a technological revolution arrived the pandemic speeded up what experienced now begun, just as it speeded up the Zoom revolution that is transforming organization and workplace perform.

Men and women obtained streaming providers and viewed motion pictures at property. They received made use of to it. They liked it. They’d invite pals and stream new releases alongside one another. Or they stayed in their pajamas and watched it.

I by no means considered motion picture theaters would go out of style, but I see that in the past couple of months, given that New York has loosened up and matters are open, I have gone to Broadway and Off-Broadway reveals five situations and to a motion picture not at all, besides this week for this column. Like all People, I truly love videos. But I can view them at residence.

The aged earth of The usa at the films, of accumulating at the nearby temple of lifestyle, the multiplex, is about. Persons will not rush out to see a movie they read was good but which is confined to theatrical release they’ll keep residence understanding it will be streaming soon.

Motion picture theaters will not absolutely go out of business enterprise a excellent quantity will endure mainly because men and women will fill them to go to superhero motion pictures and massive fantastical motion movies. Men and women will want to see those people on the display screen jointly and hoot and holler. But it will never ever once more be as it was, distinct generations, different individuals, coming alongside one another on Saturday evening at the bijou. The bijou is at household now, on the sofa or bed, streaming in ultrahigh definition.

In considering about this I hearken back to

James Agee’s

tiny masterpiece, “A Dying in the Loved ones,” a novel released posthumously in 1957. He was America’s very first terrific movie critic, but in the book he remembered his boyhood in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1915, and his father indicating at the meal desk, “Well, spose we go to the picture present.” They’d stroll to the film property and the total city was there. “And there was

William S. Hart

with each guns blazing and his long, horse facial area and his very long, challenging lip, and the terrific region rode absent driving him as vast as the environment.” Then the monitor was filled with a city—and there was

Charlie Chaplin.

“Everyone laughed the moment they saw him,” and as they remaining his father’s face was “wrapped in good humor, the memory of Charlie.”

You lose some thing when the full town isn’t there any more. It is far better when the entire town is collected. The move to streaming strikes me as nonetheless one more substantial cultural change, and I never know the answer or cure to this modify and others will have to discover it. Because not all videos can be superhero movies, and not all motion pictures need to be.

As to “West Facet Story”: It’s charming. It is attractive, stunning, and tender about America. The music is even lusher, fuller than in the primary and the search of the movie is a lot more vibrant and sweeter. It’s beautifully forged just about every younger star is gifted and plausible, and you have an honest sense of witnessing the beginning of fantastic careers—the dude who plays Riff, the man who plays Bernardo, and the youthful female who plays Maria.

It is not woke, it is excellent. “America,” that most American of songs, so knowing but not jaded, is completed differently from the primary but much better, much more communally, and it is just as joyous and comedian.

The Journal’s Joe Morgenstern utilised accurately the ideal term to explain this motion picture: “Exultant.”

It is excellent that this story, this songs and these lyrics, enter the earth yet again.

The full issue can make you sense that The us has a probability.

If I have been a center or large college teacher I’d consider my class to see it and say, “The tunes and lyrics are extremely terrific and you should know them to be culturally literate also The usa was sort of like this the moment.” I’d get a faculty course just after acquiring them read through

Jane Jacobs

to realize far better what was missing in the slum clearance that created way for Lincoln Centre.

There are flaws, but so what? The cultural framing of the Jets and the Sharks is a very little tidy and not rather on the mark. It manufactured me think of Clifford Odets signaling the immutable socioeconomic forces that propelled the anguished doing the job-class boxer who’d rather be a violinist. Not everything has to be discussed, and some items were as well heightened. The slum-clearance sets were being a very little as well war-torn Berlin and seemed like outtakes from “Saving Non-public Ryan.” New York did not search like that even in the age of city renewal. And the finish someway requires a very little for a longer time than you want. But all over again, so what?

A closing observe on the viewers. I saw it in the AMC theater on 68th and Broadway at 12:30 p.m. on a weekday. Which is quite much in which the action of the story took area, in 1957. The theater was about 10% comprehensive. A mix of ages, but additional skewed more than 50. Here’s what struck me. No person remaining at the stop. They stayed in their seats in the course of the closing credits, and applauded specific names. Mr. Spielberg obtained the heartiest but everybody acquired some.

My assumed is maybe only 10% are observing excellence in America proper now but when they do they’re so appreciative and want to display it. Ten percent of 330 million individuals is 33 million, and that is really an audience. Another person will have to discover out how to thoroughly serve them in the revolution we’re in, and it won’t be with superheroes.