The Color Purple (2023)

I was worried about making this my first full experience of The Color Purple, but I felt that my experience of the story was long overdue. Having not read the book by Alice Walker, nor seen the previous film adaptation by Steven Spielberg (I have to be in just the right headspace to watch something I anticipate being so heavy-going, which is why I have STILL yet to watch Schindler’s List), I was vaguely aware of the fact that it had also been turned into a successful musical, but I had no idea how that would work with the disturbing content. Having now watched this film, an adaptation that uses numbers from the musical, u still have no idea how the two elements are supposed to work together. Because they don’t, not for me anyway, but some others disagree.

Here’s a very basic plot summary. Celie (Fantasia Barrino) has been abused by her father, and has subsequently given birth to children that were almost immediately taken away from her. She is then handed over to be married to Mister (Colman Domingo), an abusive and horrid man who just wants a woman to look after his older children and keep the house in order. Mister is angered when his son, Harpo (Corey Hawkins), becomes involved in a serious relationship with the confident and outspoken Sofia (Danielle Brooks), but his mood is lifted by the arrival of a woman he obviously prefers to his own mistreated wife, a singer named Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson).

With writer Marcus Gardley translating Marsha Norman’s stage version of the material into movie form, it’s hard to be overly critical of a film that has the hurdle of such a strange mix at the heart of it. The script has moments that still work, powerful moments that remain as effective and shocking today as they did when they were first written, but viewers know that the tone and flow of the narrative will eventually be spoiled by some musical numbers. Which is easy to accept if the musical numbers are memorable and impressive enough. With perhaps one exception, these are not.

Director Blitz Bazawule hasn’t done anything else that I’m familiar with, but his relatively small filmography has at least a couple of entries pointing towards the reason for putting him at the head of this production. He does well enough, although I do wish the visuals throughout had been more interesting, if they had made a stronger choice on how to depict the world we’re taken into, but is as hampered as the writer by the source material.

The cast, thankfully, do great work with what they are given. Barrino may be depressingly passive for most of her journey, at least until she finds even deeper reserves of courage amidst the ongoing abuse and indignities, but she remains sweet and easy to root for throughout, showing someone trying to make the best of a situation that is seemingly destined to never improve. Domingo plays a loathsome figure, supported in his choices by his own father (Louis Gossett Jr.) in one or two scenes, and he doesn’t try to sugar-coat his brutishness, for the most part. Hawkins is good, playing an entitled young man who seems to be very much poised between turning out good or bad, and a number of other supporting cast members do solid work. But it’s Brooks and Henson who stand out, both portraying women who refuse to stay in whatever pigeonhole the world wants to put them in. The film rises up whenever one of these two women appears onscreen, and they ultimately make the whole thing feel bearable. They let the viewers remember that things can change in much the same way that they inspire hope in our lead character.

It’s all put together well enough, this certainly doesn’t feel lazy or careless, but The Color Purple still remains, for me, a powerful story that shouldn’t be rudely interrupted by occasional songs. I look forward to anything that these cast and main crew members do next. I just really hope that it’s not another musical.

5/10

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