Why Adding Rita Moreno's Valentina Makes The Ending Worse
Matthew Barrera Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner made some changes to West Side Story, but the addition of Valentina — while fine — makes the ending way harsher.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for West Side Story.
Why adding Rita Moreno’s Valentina in 2021’s West Side Story makes the ending worse. Directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Tony Kushner, West Side Story makes certain changes to the story that affect the film’s final scenes in a way that wasn’t the case before. It also makes the musical film’s finale more emotionally complicated than likely intended.
Moreno, who played Anita in the 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story, portrays a character named Valentina in the remake. Valentina was not in the older film or the musical play both movies are based on. The character is a reconstituted version of Doc, the man who was the drug store owner keeping Tony employed in the original. In Spielberg’s iteration, it’s Valentina, a widowed Puerto Rican woman, who owns the drugstore and gives Tony a job and a place to sleep. She doesn’t trust Riff and thinks Tony deserves a second chance. She believes the only way to do so is by staying out of the feud between the Jets and the Sharks.
While Moreno’s character is welcome and adds complexities to the story, Valentina’s actions at the end of West Side Story — protecting Tony while walking Chino to the cops and not fully standing with Anita when she needed it most — removes some of the nuances and makes her stance all the more confusing and detrimental to the characters she turns her back on. It seems rather odd that Valentina would hide Tony away after he killed Bernardo, protecting him from facing the consequences of his actions and sympathizing with him despite the violence of his actions. Meanwhile, Valentina has no issues marching Chino to the cops after he killed Tony rather than try and protect him, a Puerto Rican man, in the same way she does Tony.
Valentina essentially chooses a side and, considering how heavily the Jets provoked the Sharks throughout West Side Story in their racist-fueled rivalry, it’s a wonder she doesn’t show more empathy towards any of the Sharks. Valentina’s choice to protect Tony above all else also put her in the uncomfortable position of defending him at every turn, even as she came face-to-face with Anita in her grief about Bernardo and the Jets assaulting her. Valentina being caught in the middle made the situation all the more disconcerting. Defending Tony despite all he’d done, while leaving Chino and Anita to fend for themselves is mystifying and suggests that Tony deserves a second (and even third chance) while Chino doesn’t.
It’s unlikely the filmmakers saw Valentina’s actions as an issue, but it unintentionally makes West Side Story’s ending all the more charged with tension. To be sure, West Side Story parallels Valentina’s story with that of Maria’s, a Puerto Rican woman who falls in love with a white man and defies the odds stacked against them. However, Valentina arguably becomes an apologist for Tony and the Jets’ actions against the Sharks, whether she wanted to be or not. Be it not helping or standing with Chino, Anita, or any of the other Sharks, Valentina’s decisions in West Side Story certainly change the way the film's final moments play out.
