Last week I alluded to The Color Purple as being “Oscar-bait”, a term which has quite a bit of unfair stigma. Yes, it often refers to movies that are transparently trying to win awards through the seriousness of their subject matter, heaviness of the performances, or other Academy-catering devices; and sometimes they fail to make a connection. But there is something noble in films at least aiming for high quality and importance. Oscar-bait failures are typically better than summer blockbuster failures. And likewise, a lot of the best American movies have been Oscar-bait -they’ve just done it right.
Steven Spielberg was hardly the first director nor the last to shift gears in this way. He’s always been a proud filmmaker, a fan of the serious cinematic legends. And as someone who’d become known for blockbusters, flights of fancy, and sensational entertainment, it made perfect sense he’d want to stretch his wings, focus on something real for a change, and yes, see if he could stand a chance at Oscar gold. This doesn’t lessen any of his previous successes, some of which even earned him nominations. But even Kurosawa made Ikiru. So Spielberg made The Color Purple.
Based on the novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple is an incredibly distinct yet still fundamentally Spielberg-ian film; more dramatic and harsher than any of his previous movies, yet still sentimental and infectiously optimistic. Some may prefer the more gritty or realistically brutal image of misogyny and racism in the rural south of the early twentieth century, but The Color Purple’s message of hope and endurance is more rewarding than films like that often are, even if it may not be as honest. Though on the other hand, it may be.
Set in Georgia and over a period of forty years, the story follows Celie (Desreta Jackson as a child, Whoopi Goldberg as an adult), an impoverished and abused black girl who, after being forced to give up two babies from rape, is married off to a marginally less abusive farmer she calls “Mister” (Danny Glover). As she encounters strong women over the course of her life, she gradually begins to stand up and defy the oppressions all around her.
However you look at it, you can’t get around the fact that this movie, this heavily black feminist movie, is made by a white man. But Spielberg did the right thing in letting it be just that –for the most part. Relinquishing his auteur sensibilities, there’s no sense of ownership he imbues on The Color Purple. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain some of his trademarks or his particular touch, but his focus is on character over style, narrative over visuals, and he concedes to the novels’ spirit more than his own. Spielberg genuinely doesn’t seem to be trying to impress, even in the moments where the direction seems fanciful. He steps back and allows it to just be a story -Celie’s story, and a powerful story at that.
This is a story about a womans’ slow journey through injustice to freedom. Not terribly unusual to be sure, but one that doesn’t fail to be compelling if the perspective and context are rooted in truth and the investment earned through nuance and development. And this is very much true of Celie’s life as accounted here over the course of many years. Part of what makes her story work so well I believe, is Spielberg’s sentimentalism. And that sentimentalism may look clumsy. Hell, the movie opens with the two young sisters whimsically frolicking in a field of purple vervains only to transition into a painful childbirth. This sounds like it would be tonal whiplash, but the effect is that it highlights the contrast between the dream and the reality of Celie’s life. It also establishes a theme of the movie in finding the little moments of happiness through long-term awful circumstances, as well as the important relationship of Celie and Nettie. Even through hardships, there’s hope or joy in the corners of numerous moments and interactions, enforced by a light atmosphere in spite of its subject matter, comic relief that really is relieving, and a really nice, sanguine score, not by John Williams for a change, but rather provided by Quincy Jones.
But of course the other thing that carries the movie is Whoopi Goldberg’s performance, which may be surprising to those most familiar with her celebrity of the past decade or so, mostly concentrated in daytime T.V. and lesser movie roles. But I think we take for granted how good of an actress Goldberg was. She’s pretty incredible in this movie through all the facets of her character; required to be differing levels of meek for a lot of her screen-time, and she not only pulls this off, but also the tiny moments of pleasure, particularly in the growth of her relationship with Shug Avery, played by a delightful Margaret Avery, the blues singer former lover of Mister, which develops with wonderful sweetness. It’s also nice the movie wasn’t afraid to keep the lesbian side of Celie’s character and that light romance with Shug which I understand was significant in the book. Her crowning moment of course, is her assertion of defiance when, after finding out Mister kept her sisters’ letters from her, she declares she’s leaving with Shug, and unleashes a tirade of vitriol over the Easter dinner table; only rivalled by her ultimate reunion with her sister which achieves all the heartwarming “feels” it attempts to harness.
But Celie’s only the main face of a movie that is very much about and is a tribute to black women and their unique struggle. The only truly strong characters in the movie are women: Celie, Shug, the domineering Sofia (played by Oprah Winfrey in easily her best movie performance); and while this does have the unfortunate side-effect of possibly playing into racist stereotypes of black men as abusive and violent, its’ affirmative feminism greatly outshines this criticism. One of the most interesting things is how Mister’s brutality and toxicity stems from his insecurity around women. We see that Shug has an ability to intimidate him that Celie never gained until the end, and at Sofia’s wedding he’s visibly dismayed by the crowd of Sofia’s bridesmaids. The power dynamic between Mister and Celie doesn’t change until she threatens him at the aforementioned dinner. Afterwards, when he tries to physically stop her leaving she’s finally able to repel him and it’s the most satisfactory scene in a film with more than a few of those. I’ve never read Walker’s novel (though I’ve only heard good things about it), but I have to admire how she acknowledged this process and root of misogyny before a lot of the world did. Overcoming racism is another theme in the movie, conveyed almost entirely through Sofia’s storyline where her resolve is broken by white people, shot without sympathy, spit flying from their mouths as they confront her in the street.
It’s framed very well and the movie is shot terrifically. This might be some of the best cinematography in any Spielberg movie, very clear and naturalistic in the outdoor scenes, showcasing the beautiful world the misery occupies. The scenes with the titular colour purple in the foreground flowers are the most striking. The interiors are shot closely, claustrophobically at times (especially in Shug’s comely little nightclub on the river), and the lighting is melancholy, but focussed in such a way to better illuminate the skin tones of the predominantly black cast. Spielberg employs a few interesting techniques, most noticeably in his transitions editing, cutting mid-dialogue from one scene to another, such as Harpo and Sofia`s wedding and the appearance of an elephant as Celie reads Nettie`s letters. Reading becomes a convenient transition device –Celie grows up while reading a passage from Oliver Twist, emerging as an adult from the same room she read in as a child.
That’s something else well-conveyed in The Color Purple: the passage of time. Even though not much effort is taken to age Goldberg or Avery, and Nettie is played by the same actress, Akosua Busia, as both child and adult, you have no problem believing the decades going by. Maybe that is because the world of this movie as Roger Ebert said “lays claim to its own geography in our imaginations”, existing completely on its own terms and in its own regions, divorced somewhat from the rest of the world but witness to its evolution nonetheless.
In any case, The Color Purple is wonderful; a proactive, inspiring, feel-good movie about hope, love, and the indomitable spirit. It has scenes of cruelty: when Mister throws Nettie out after she spurned his advances, the emotions are so high it’s pretty tough to watch. But it has no problem atoning for these moments and making itself richer for doing so. And Spielberg deserves credit for that. He proved he could tell mature, dramatic stories, while even maintaining his signature. And he wasn’t done by a long shot.
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment