Purple Rain is really unlike any musical movie I’ve ever seen. Its songs are woven into the fabric of the film and yet don’t break its reality -every diegetic performance is an actual performance. It features a cast made up of entirely non-professional actors, mostly it consists of musicians playing versions of themselves -or at least characters with the same names. Its story and themes are almost purposely thin, it’s characters even more so. We talk a lot about the problem of movies being now brands more than individual stories, and Purple Rain is perhaps an original in that commodification of movies for a purely commercial purpose, as it nakedly exists to simply shore up the pop culture capital of its product. And that product is Prince.
This movie is in very vivid terms a Prince vanity project -the pop superstar having had a fixation on conquering Hollywood and by the early 80s had amassed enough power and influence to manifest this dream project. And it is absolutely his project. Purple Rain not only stars Prince and features a prominent soundtrack entirely written or co-written by him, it’s story is clearly based heavily around aspects of his own life and personality. The movie employs different writers and a director, but Prince is its real creative visionary, and it is probably only his inexperience at the time in those disciplines that prevented the virtuoso artist from taking on either of those roles -he would later step into the director’s chair himself for Under the Cherry Moon in 1986.
And yet in spite of all that is generally assumed about these kinds of projects and in spite of its own deficiencies in areas of story and character, Purple Rain is a good movie. Prince seemed to realize that aesthetics are the best way of selling himself, and so ensured that his movie was as aesthetically enrapturing as can be. Who cares what the movie’s about when it feels this tantalizing?
Regardless, the plot is about an up-and-coming Minneapolis singer called The Kid, whose band The Revolution (Prince’s real-life backing band) is one of the house acts at the First Avenue Club. Their rival The Time is led by Morris Day, who conspires to replace The Kid’s act with a new group; all the while The Kid is involved in a new romantic relationship with an aspiring singer Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero), and dealing emotionally with the domestic violence in his parents’ home (this it seems is one of the few things in the movie not derived in some way from Prince’s real life).
Prince isn’t quite so egotistical as to characterize his alter ego purely as the virtuous underdog subverted simply for being too talented -I mean that is part of the character, but he’s drawn with more flaws, such as an unwillingness to collaborate, an attitude of egotistical self-indulgence, and even a streak of violence implicitly inherited from his father, of which he is ashamed. But they are very much the kind of personality details that make for an arc Prince finds both narratively compelling and amenable to his star persona. After all, alongside these he is still charming and clever, sexy and incredibly talented. However the depth of this character matters very little given Prince’s own remarkable charisma and unique style, and I think everyone involved knew it. As a movie star Prince seems very cognizant of his limitations, and so he doesn’t play anything too difficult or complex in terms of drama -it’s a bit of a minimalist performance in some regards, not heavy on dialogue or detail. And yet he is still very good -he can play emotion quite astutely. His musical performances for the camera of course speak for themselves.
These are the selling points of the movie of course -whether in nightclub performance scenes or as non-diegetic montage atmosphere; and while my personal opinions on the songs varies, one thing that can’t be denied is how good they look. The director for this movie was Albert Magnoli, an editor who’d never made a movie before and has made very few since, becoming subsequently Prince’s manager and primary music video director (Tango & Cash is his only other modestly remembered credit). But this collaborative career-turn speaks to how well he ‘got’ Prince as both an artist and a pop icon; and in spite of his inexperience he comes into Purple Rain with tremendous confidence and a stunning grasp of that distinctly flavourful visual style of 80s music videos. And it can be argued that Purple Rain is just a feature-length music video, though if it is it’s one of the best and slickest. In those performance scenes, the lighting and camera-work oozes an atmosphere of cool spontaneity and powerful sexuality. It is a very hot movie, both in the sensual and literal sense. Blazing radiant lights on stage capture the sweat-fuelled intensity of the space and of Prince’s open and liberal sexuality. There’s passion too in the romantic storyline, in addition to its sexual playfulness (the Kid halfway tricking Appolonia into stripping naked to swim in a lake), but the movie doesn’t have love scenes of the conventional sort. Yet its atmosphere is very sexy, the physical chemistry of Prince and Kotero is captivating, and the mood of the music leans hard into that same seductive style. Take the scene after the apparent suicide attempt of his father where he first composes “Purple Rain” -there is a heated haze to the whole sequence, one soon bested by its finished live performance.
And yeah, this is a movie that deals in really harsh subject matter -harsher perhaps than it should given the limitations of the script -but Prince is nothing if not ambitious. The personal drama is the movie’s weakest area -for as much as it is about the Kid and how great he is, it doesn’t develop his character much at all. This was probably a wise decision for the sake of Prince’s acting abilities, but it does leave so much of the drama as pretty shallow and uninteresting. It is curious to think about why he chose this kind of material to deal with in the film; what drew him to the idea of playing a character who is otherwise himself but comes from a troubled home and has a certain fear about becoming the abusive monster his father is -while at the same time respecting that father for some nebulous intimate reason, enough to resurrect one of his old compositions and dedicate his big song to him. It’s a specific set of issues envisioned for his alter ego -you wonder why that is the story he chose to enact. There’s the cynicism in how it creates for Prince a very appealing narrative to present to audiences with ambiguous validity; but I believe the challenge it presented to him artistically was its own motivator as well.
Still it’s a fundamentally dull story, which is why it’s a good thing Purple Rain relies so much on style. Prince’s personal style is a big part of this -how he affords those big flashy clothes and that stunning purple motorcycle on what looks to be the modest means of his parents is a question the movie doesn’t and shouldn’t address. It’s enough that he would look out of place in any kind of normal outfit or hairstyle that justifies his glamour here. The movie itself earns its glamourous stripes -successfully making out Minneapolis to be the kind of cultural centre it’s certainly not seen as much anymore. The clubs are dripping with cool, the world seems large and encompassing -and there’s also the fact that it is an explicitly black one. There are so few white characters in this movie that is populated in every corner and at every level of power by black figures -creating an image outside of white patriarchy that doesn’t ever attempt to cater to white audiences -even as they may have been at the time massive Prince fans. Traditions in soul have dramatically informed his music and the film doesn’t hide what that looks like.
It is of course most apparent in the climax of the film, that is probably its best sequence, where he performs “Purple Rain” to a full crowd of rapt listeners and a club owner silently tearing up. It’s become a classic song obviously, but this scene really deserves the credit as to why. It is Magnoli’s best work of the film at both capturing Prince’s passion and performance essence as well as an intoxicating atmosphere that immerses you entirely. The performance rings with such power even as it moves rather slowly at first, and while the literal meaning may be a bit nebulous it perfectly conveys the sense of meaning it has for the story, which is rendered just a little bit more resonant as a result. It’s one of the great moments for a musical movie to go out on, understandably iconic.
I wouldn’t use that term for Purple Rain itself; it is a savvy work of corporate public image art but that doesn’t negate it from being good. It captures Prince in his prime as a performer and demonstrates just why he was so compelling a celebrity -in not insubstantial part due to his ambition and diverse explorations. It’s a great showcase and stunningly done -and very clearly one of the most 80s movies ever!
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