Fairly criticized though it may have been over the years for everything from fidelity to the source material to handling of tone and themes to even the lapses of vision that come from a white filmmaker taking on a very black story, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is nonetheless a pretty great movie that I think stands among his finest. And that movie it can be said had an impact on the continued popularity of both that novel and Walker herself.
And certainly it played a part in the creation of a 2005 Broadway adaptation of the story by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray; the basis now of its own film adaptation directed by Blitz Bazawule, and produced by (among many others as the credits show) Spielberg, Quincy Jones -who wrote the music of the original film, and Oprah Winfrey -whose Oscar-nominated performance as Sofia helped launch her career in the mid-80s. That’s quite a bit of industry weight, even for a grand holiday season musical. And in some sense, it is all on display in this version of The Color Purple -a big rousing spectacle in the classic Hollywood sense if ever there was one. And yet a big part of why it feels shallow is in fact because of this.
The narrative of The Color Purple is of course the traumatic story of Celie, here played by Fantasia Barrino -reprising her role from the stage; a southern black woman in the early years of the twentieth century whose life for a long period seems defined by the abuses inflicted on her by men in her life. Two children she bears to her father are given away and later after she marries the equally abusive “Mister” Johnson (Colman Domingo), her beloved sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) is cast out of her life too. As these and other harrowing hardships continue through the years she finds little moments of solace and joy, often through women in her life such as the tough-spirited Sofia (Danielle Brooks -also reprising her role), and the enigmatic singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson).
The Color Purple is an often bleak and troubling story, with hope only evident in little spurts before the last act -and while this makes for an extremely compelling drama, as a musical the story seems ill-at-ease. It’s not that musicals can’t be made out of dark subject matter, but the particular confines of the Broadway musical, with its preferences for ambition and excitement, make it exceedingly difficult. And to better acquiesce to that, at least judging from this movie translation, the adaptation had to be watered down, with a result that can’t help but feel whitewashed. The loss of Celie’s children is less harrowing, Mister’s brutality is considerably toned down, and the little disappointments that dot her life sting a little less. Sofia’s husband Harpo (Corey Hawkins) has to be characterized more moderately given he gets an upbeat musical number early on, and Shug similarly has to be more straight-laced, less sexual.
And that’s the case even as the movie leans in less ambiguously to the romantic relationship that develops between her and Celie. In the original film they may not have gone on dates together or woke up in the same bed, but there was a far stronger sexual tension between the two, one of serene unspoken desire -making their attraction and that single kiss that much more powerful (and already something bold for 1985). Here the openness strips it of much passion, makes it almost conventional. On the whole this film just has a cleanness to it, a pervasive high spirit and optimism all throughout that feels removed from the reality of the story, and that sense translates I expect even if you haven’t read the book or seen the prior movie. The stakes are lessened for this and the triumphs don’t have the power they should. The greatest moment in the original movie is when Celie at last amounts the courage to stand up to Mister and leave him -she gets a spectacular parting speech out of it. This movie plays that same beat, tries to play it just as earnestly but it doesn’t resonate so well, especially with -among this adaptation’s little bits of self-censorship- Mister being drawn in more empathetic terms, and perhaps most frustratingly, even allowed a redemption which is wholly unearned.
Domingo is great however, as are most of the cast. Henson plays up the somewhat delusional ostentatiousness of Shug very well, and Brooks has had this kind of a break coming for a while now. But primarily the movie is a showcase for Barrino, the clear performance highlight of the piece, both in her doleful acting and her strong and extravagant singing. She captures the emotional aspects of the character well too, the way she responds to minor flatteries -the notable moment where we see her smile for Shug is particularly well played, and in a different fashion than the original film. For this version of Celie at least, she is quite an ideal match.
Bazawule, a Ghanan filmmaker who has worked in music videos and visual arts (most notably with Beyonce on her Lion King soundtrack album), was hired almost certainly for the musical sequences alone -which he does a great job with. The song segments are choreographed well and shot with spontaneity -they seem to always have a keen sense of geography too, giving the impression of a camera following performers on a genuine Broadway stage. The songs really give off a Broadway energy too, but I can't say they leave an impression for the most part. Save for maybe "What About Love?" and "Keep it Movin'" -the latter the obligatory original song for Oscar consideration, I can't say any of them are all that good. "Hell No!", a song for both Sofia and Celie, has a lot of potent sentiment behind it, yet it also feels like a cliché. And "I'm Here", for how strongly Barrino belts it out, come off very much both musically and lyrically, as the first, dullest song idea anyone came up with for a musical of The Color Purple.
The root of where this movie goes wrong may well be in that very conceit. Inspiring story though it is, the broadly appealing Hollywood musical is not a good format for The Color Purple, at least not one done in this way -polished, palatable, and afraid of its darker edges. And perhaps it works better on stage, but as a film it has no lustre outside of its musical sequences; and those sequences though great in isolation have a distancing effect on the story around them. There’s plenty of good to be found in the performances and the production values, but nothing that rises above the inherent mediocrity of the story here being told, the shallowness in much of its efforts of conviction, and the choices -especially near the end- that are baffling on their face and downright insulting when considered. What it most resembles is not the Spielberg original nor the kinds of movie musicals it clearly aspires to, but a Disney movie -clean, safe, big, and opulent. And that is not an association that should be anywhere in the vicinity of a work like The Color Purple.
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