Full disclosure, I was and am a HUGE fan of the 1961 WEST SIDE STORY. I know it’s every detail, every word of every lyric, every emotional cue. Rita Moreno was the iconic Rita. So, I went to see this new Spielberg directed, Moreno produced, 2021 version with more curiosity than expectation. Not forgetting that WEST SIDE STORY was inspired by Shakespeare’s ROMEO AND JULIET, the general structure of the movies is the same yet contemporary and musical. The 2021 version is grittier. The context of the drama is more developed, setting it in a disappearing New York neighbourhood, which makes the rivalry of the street gangs more a matter of life and death that either the play or the first movie. Rita Moreno is very much celebrated in this new film, with a newly created character and a reallocation of a song. Two musical numbers in the 2021 version paled when compared to the 1961: (1) the dance at the gym didn’t have the battle fever of the original (probably solely due to the incomparable Rita Moreno in 1961) and by moving Tony and Maria’s first meeting from the actual dance to behind the bleachers it lost the transcendent quality of their love at first sight; and (2) Maria’s “I Feel Pretty” scene being moved from a Dress Shop (where the girls worked) to a department store (where they were but a small part of a cleaning crew), despite the clever use of store displays, changed the context from dreaming of a wedding to dreaming of blending into Americana. I also felt that 2021 suffered from the loss of (a) priest, which stripped away marriage vows in a church for promises in a museum (??), and (b) the the loss of the potion separated the lovers and the tragic death of love at the end. HOWEVER, ALL COMPARISONS OR DISAPPOINTMENTS EVAPORATED when Rachel Zegler’s soaring soprano lifted Maria’s first note. It was so beautiful I had to remind myself to breath. Her duets with Amsel Elgort were transporting. What would have been a rating of 7 (good) was made 9 (superb) by Zegler’s performance, making this a must see film. [Musical Drama]
[8.0/10] The Seventh Kavalry is trying to murder and then replace Dr. Manhattan. Lady Trieu is trying to save him and prevent that from happening to “save the fucking world.” Laurie Blake is imprisoned by Senator Keene, the apparent mastermind behind this evil plot. And Angela is...married to Dr. Manhattan, trapped in his own personal meat puppet, unbeknownst to anyone except Angela, even himself.
Holy hell that is a lot to take in. While the front half of Watchmen’s first season played coy in several respects, taking its time to introduce characters and the renewed version of the comic’s world, the back half is dropping bombshells fast and furiously. You could be forgiven for taking mindfucks like Angela being hooked up to an elephant (They never forget! Get it?), to Veidt dropping a huge fart at his bizarre show trial in some outer space prison, to Lady Trieu having cloned her own mother, to Angela hammering a hole in her husband’s skull and pulling out a Dr. Manhattan-themed cerebral IUD and rightfully saying “What the damn hell is all this?”
But what’s weird is how “An Almost Religious Awe” explains both too much and not enough. That starts with Angela. In the same way that Laurie Blake and Looking Glass and Hooded Justice all got focus episodes, giving us backstory and more dimension for each of them, “An Almost Religious Awe” is Angela’s equivalent, even in a series where she’s the protagonist.
Why did Angela assume the mantle of Sister Night? Because she admired a VHS exploitation film that became a talisman and connection to her parents, and because the titular “nun with a gun” on the cover looked like her. Why did she become a police officer? Because she watched a pair of Vietnamese cops bring her parents’ killer to justice, and one of them handed her a badge. Why was she so willing to take in her adoptive children beyond mere kindness? Because she was an orphan herself who knows what it’s like.
It’s all a little too neat. Amid the weird, intersecting tangles that stretch across time and space that connect the disparate corner of Watchmen together, “An Almost Religious Awe” draws too many straight lines of cause and effect for its central character.
And yet, it also asks the question that the original comic did -- what sort of trauma would cause a person to don a mask and prowl the streets at night? For Angela, we see that trauma firsthand, in the death of her parents at the hands of terrorists, in what’s implied to be a difficult life in a Vietnamese orphanage, in having her apparent chance to escape that and live a better life in Tulsa taken away by what at least seems like a cruel twist of fate in the form of her grandmother’s heart attack.
If this show’s take on Hooded Justice makes him a negative image of Superman, a child sent by his parents as the last of his people on the brink of destruction who would inspire an age of heroes, then Sister Night is the negative image of Batman, the caped crusader who works with police to stop injustice after seeing her parents killed in the streets. Watchmen interrogates the way that race, that colonization, that the presence of a nigh-literal god would have on that iconic story, and blurs the line between oppressor and oppressed.
That’s the most interesting thematic move “An Almost Religious Awe” makes. As it meshes Angela’s own memories with those of her grandfather. We see Vietnamese police putting a bag over the head of one of their own the same way that the Cyclops-affiliated cops did to William Reeves. We see everything from the terrorists to Angela’s parents to Dr. Manhattan himself equated with both sides of the law and order, justice vs. injustice divide.
I’ll admit, I’m not sure exactly what Watchmen is saying yet, and I’m not even sure it knows what it’s saying yet. But this episode seems to suggest it’s the idea that it’s all too easy for the oppressed to take on the mantle of their oppressors, in the name of righting wrongs that have been visited on themselves, but who unwittingly perpetuate the very systems they’re trying to correct or dismantle. It suggests that it’s the people who act beyond those mete and bounds, outside of them, who make genuine changes. And it suggests that the combination of the story of her life and the story of her grandfather’s is teaching Angela this lesson, forcing her to see the parallels between those abusing their power and those forced to absorb those abuses, and which side of that line she and so many people she knows have stood on, whether they knew it or not.
Sometimes those parallels are a little too plain. Juxtaposing the images from William’s past and Angela’s while someone else delivers exposition is effective in small doses, but after a while you just want to say, “we get it!” At the same time, it’s helpful to have Senator Keene and Jane Crawford confirm the Seventh Kavalry’s evil plot, and to know that Lady Trieu is out to stop it. But it’s a weird balance here between information presented on a silver platter for the audience to consume like popcorn and an array of bewildering reveals that feel tucking into a pot pie that’s secretly a confetti bomb. Half of it is too easy, and half of it is weird and almost ungraspable.
Still, there’s something exhilarating about not knowing what the hell is happening. I’m leery about the small universe problem where Angela’s father and Lady Trieu’s father and even Cal himself all turn out to be major characters from the original comic. I’m leery of whether the show will be able to pull off the Seventh Kavalry vs. Lady Trieu vs. Dr. Manhattan (vs. Ozymandias? vs. Angela? vs. Laurie?) confrontation. I’m leery of whether the show will be able to synthesize all of the interesting snippets of ideas about the intersection of race and power and oppression into a clear message. But I’m sure as hell interested to see the show try.
(As an aside, I like the use of the color blue throughout this episode to help suffuse the spectre of Dr. Manhattan throughout an episode that he never actually appears in, but where his presence hangs over everything that happens. And at the same time, the glimpses of a post-Manhattan Vietnam we see are striking in the way the show the show imagines the tensions and visions of a unique culture being crammed into the box of becoming the fifty-first state.)
