The Color Purple – Snapshot
The Color Purple might have worked as a television mini-series, but the shifts in tone are jarring and tend to overshadow such great things as Danielle Brooks’ acting, some good music, and terrific staging on Georgia’s sea islands. Works somewhat as a musical but not as a drama! (3*)
Where to Watch:
Stream: Max
Rent: Apple/Prime/Fandango ($4)
The Color Purple – The Oscar Buzz
Oscar Nominations (1) / Oscar Wins (0) :
Supporting Actress (Danielle Brooks)
The Color Purple was originally a 1982 novel by Alice Walker. Her book won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Three years later Steven Spielberg turned it into a movie starring Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery. The movie received eleven nominations, including Best Picture, but didn’t win a single Oscar. In 2005 Marsha Norman made the book into a Broadway musical which won a Tony award and ten years later the Off-Broadway revival won two Tony awards. This movie is, apparently, more of an adaptation of the stage musicals than it is the original movie. (I have seen Spielberg’s movie, although it was decades ago, but have not read the book or seen the plays.)
Despite its huge all star cast and extensive technical crew, this The Color Purple received only a single nomination, for Danielle Brooks as Supporting Actress. Just 35 years old this year, I couldn’t help but think that I had seen her before, just couldn’t figure out where until I did some research. I found that she played Tastee in one of my favorite TV series Orange is the New Black. Her role in that series was also in a community of women, with oppressive men, albeit in a prison. She carried herself well showing surprising depths of feeling in difficult situations. It became very clear in The Color Purple that she commanded the screen whenever she appeared and even, in most cases, outperformed the leading actors. Pay particular attention to her first meeting with Mister at the bar, a place where women weren’t supposed to be, but she makes it clear who is really in charge. We will be seeing more of Ms. Brooks.
Brooks sings just fine, but many of the other women in this film are better known for their singing than their acting. H.E.R. plays Squeak in The Color Purple, but actually won the Oscar for Original Song in Judas and the Black Messiah. Singer Ciara plays the grown up Nettie but is onscreen only for a few of the last 20 minutes of the movie. Shug Avery, the blues and jazz singer in the film, is played by Taraji P. Henson who appeared in Hidden Figures and was nominated for supporting actress in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Henson is fine as a singer – she was wonderfully seductive with the song “Push Da Button” – but was more disappointing as an actress. Her scenes failed to rise to the same level as Brooks. And the two young women who played Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi in her first role as an actress) and Nettie (Halley Bailey of Little Mermaid fame) as teen sisters displayed both terrific singing and engaging acting. In many ways it was unfortunate that their roles ended after the first half-hour.
The Color Purple centers around the adult Celie, played by Fantasia Barrino. Barrino, better known by her first name, is an R&B/soul singer who launched her career by winning American Idol in 2004. Since then she has recorded multiple albums, singles, and music videos. However, this is her first role as a dramatic actress. That she can sing is obvious, but as an actress I think she could use a little more seasoning. This role was obviously emotionally difficult and would have challenged even an accomplished actress. (Whoopi Goldberg played Celie in Spielberg’s film). When making a dramatic musical, trade offs must be made.
There were men in this movie, although most of them were of mean spirit and bad souls. Colman Domingo, who was nominated for leading actor in our next film, Rustin, plays the absolutely awful man Mister, Celie’s husband. He effectively conveys just what an asshole Mister could be. However the script has him engaging in an unconvincing epiphany twenty minutes before the end of the film and even Domingo’s acting can’t make up for a poorly written change of that magnitude. Corey Hawkins is a young man playing Mister’s son and Sofia’s husband. Hawkins has appeared in multiple recent movies to great effect (see the next section). And Louis Gossett Jr. – in his last role before he died – plays Mister’s father.
Interestingly the director, Blitz Bazawule, and screenplay writer, Marcus Gardley, do not have much in the way of a big screen resume. Bazawule, originally from Ghana, is best known for directing some TV work including the Beyoncé special Black Is King. Gardley has been writing screenplays since 2012, but everything he has done has been for television. Unfortunately, as I’ve ranted many times before, television and the big screen require different mind sets and just because you can do one, does not mean you can do the other.
There was Oscar talent lower in the crew list. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen was nominated for his work on The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. Production Designer Paul D. Austerberry won the Oscar for The Shape of Water. And, obviously, a musical means special attention must be paid to the sound design. In The Color Purple, 45 people are credited in the sound department including people previously nominated for films like Ford v Ferrari, La La Land, A Star is Born, Maestro, Baby Driver, and Deepwater Horizon.
The Color Purple – Related Movies
The Color Purple (1985) (The original Spielberg film, although not a musical.)
Orange is the New Black (TV series) (Brooks – played Tastee)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (08)/Ralph Breaks the Internet (18 (Henson)
King Richard (21) (Musical Score, Ellis-Taylor)
Judas and the Black Messiah (21) (Makeup&Hairstyling, H.E.R.)
Rustin (23)/Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (20)/If Beale Street Could Talk (18) (Domingo)
BlacKkKlansman (18)/The Tragedy of Macbeth (21)/Kong: Skull Island (17) (Hawkins)
An Officer and a Gentleman (82) (Gossett Jr.)
The Shape of Water (17) (Cinematography, Production Design)
Nightmare Alley (21) (Cinematography)
Bombshell (19) (Film Editing)
The Greatest Showman (17) (Film Editing, Sound)
Green Book (18) (Musical Score, Makeup&Hairstyling)
Ford v Ferrari (19)/La La Land (16)/A Star is Born (18)/Maestro (23)/Baby Driver (17)/Deepwater Horizon (16) (Sound)
One Night in Miami (20) (Costumes)
Coming 2 America (21)/Black Panther (18)/Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (22) (Makeup& Hairstyling)
The Color Purple – What Others Think
In reviewing audience ratings of The Color Purple I discovered a problem: a huge difference in the two ranking scales. Similar to Elemental, one scale rated The Color Purple third out of 24 general interest films, while the other dropped it all the way to 14th. The difference has to do with when and where the ratings are obtained. In one case I’m pretty sure the audience is asked their opinion right after seeing it in a movie theater, and in the other it is more likely to be something they do on-line after a home viewing. What the difference seems to highlight is the environmental contrast between seeing the movie in a dark theater on a huge screen with a loud sound system and viewing it on something much smaller in the crowded intimacy of your living room (or, god forbid, on your phone!) Like Elemental, as a musical with lots of song and dance numbers, The Color Purple benefits from a spectacular presentation and is diminished on most home screens. That difference is reflected in the comments from on-line viewers like “The Color Meh”, “Good Performances Mediocre Musical”, and “Incredibly disappointing”. If you average these two rating scales, it isn’t too surprising that the audience ranking for this movie ends up only eight out of 24 general interest films and twelfth out of all 38 in this year’s list. See it in a theater, though, and you will likely enjoy it more.
Critics, though, didn’t rave about it and most of them probably saw it on a big screen either at festivals or in theaters. Peyton Robinson (RogerEbert) found Brooks to be “the film’s no-holds-barred knockout, giving an undeniably crowd-pleasing performance.” But found that Henson’s acting (as Shug) “is where The Color Purple falters…Henson’s overacting is a sore thumb.” And Alissa Wilkinson (New York Times) noted “There’s a lot to like about this musical film version of Alice Walker’s novel, but the story remains slippery to would be adapters.” She concludes “I hope some future adaptation…gets Celie’s expansive humanity right. There’s so much fertile ground left to explore. It’s a tale of horror, but also of heroism.”
Combining all the ratings, The Color Purple ranks in the middle the pack – not great, but not all that bad either.
The Color Purple – Special Mention
Gullah Culture – Some of the outdoor scenes, including several on a beach with large pieces of driftwood, were filmed on Georgia’s Jekyll Island. That island is one of several that make up what are called the Sea Islands, patches of tree-covered land protecting the Georgia low country along the shore from the ravages of Atlantic Ocean storms. In our travels we camped at Crooked River State Park which was near Jekyll Island and was our home base for a few nights while we explored Fort Frederica National Monument and the very interesting city of Savannah. We also spent a day on Cumberland Island, which is a National Seashore, and is the sea island just south of Jekyll, and another day touring Wormsloe State Historic Site, a preservation of a plantation house and associated slave quarters. It was a beautiful and enlightening week along the Georgia coastline.
That coastline is part of what was, and still is to some extent, the center of Gullah culture. Embodying the sea islands and the low country along the coast from about Jacksonville, FL north to Cape Fear, NC, the area was the center for a dynamic and important Black culture from the early days of their arrival as part of the African slave trade to current times. The movie chronicles much of the hopes and aspirations of the Gullah people from the early 1900s up to around 1945. The outdoor scenes accurately portray the geography of the region with the dense vegetation capped by oak hammocks, the beach driftwood, and the ever-present swamps of the low country.
Economic interest in the area has increased recently as the islands have become attractive for resorts and vacation homes. But, historically, the lack of access and economic value made it an ideal place for emancipated blacks to live and develop their own culture, more or less independent of white society’s influences. The Gullah people brought over African rice, okra, sorghum, red peas, and watermelon; cultivated their rice as their main food staple; raised cotton as their means of “foreign exchange”; and perfected such recipes as gumbo! The Color Purple does a great job of illustrating this culture and its significance – that is one of the strengths of the film.
The Color Purple – Michael’s Moments
Unfortunately, displaying Gullah culture is one of only a few strengths developed in The Color Purple. Another one, as noted in the Oscar Buzz section is the remarkable presence of Danielle Brooks as Sofia. She deserved the Oscar nomination as she dominates every scene she is in with an understanding of emotional tone and a husky, and unexpected, singing voice. I also loved the early scenes, filmed on Jekyll Islands Driftwood Beach with Halley Bailey and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as the teenage Nettie and Celie. They not only superbly sing Huckleberry Pie and Keep It Movin’, but they also act like real sisters.
So some of the music and some of the acting is well done. But the film does not gel into a coherent whole. The first half-hour is spent showing just how awful the men treat the women in this world and sets a depressed tone. Twenty minutes before the end of the movie, Mister undergoes a totally unbelievable transformation into a good guy and,naturally, everything is resolved in a beautiful Easter dinner under a huge oak tree. Of course, this is a musical, and anything is allowed. But it is also a drama and, based on the first half-hour, the ending is tear-jerking, but isn’t set up by the rest of the film.
In between is an hour and a half of mostly the battle of the sexes – told from the female point of view – with some good, but not great music thrown into the mix. Shug (Taraji P. Henson) sings a lewd and sexy song “Push Da Button” and at one point Celie almost kills Mister, but none of these developments seem to go together except as random unconnected ideas.
Ultimately the problem with this movie comes down to the television backgrounds of the director (Blitz Bazawule) and writer (Marcus Gardley). TV and movies are, in fact, very different mediums and it is my belief that what might work in television just won’t cut it in cinema (and to some extent vice versa). With television you always have the fact that there will be another episode, until the last one. And what that structural fact entails is that the scene need not tie all the threads together – it can wait and be done later. But you don’t have that luxury in a movie – it is a two hour package and everything must be introduced, developed, and resolved in that time frame or it leaves the audience unsatisfied. Unfortunately Bazawule and Gardley need more experience in the film world.
It is also probably true that the themes of The Color Purple challenge even experienced moviemakers, especially if you add in the requirements of a musical. The story is rich and complex and telling it with song and dance only compounds the difficulties. There are some good things in this film, but ultimately it doesn’t leave you with much lasting value. See it if you like musicals. (3*)
