The Color Purple film review and star rating: ★★★★★
Shame on those who censored it. Following four adaptations, The Color Purple returns again to the feature film format, 29 years after Steven Spielberg debuted Whoopi Golderg in his iconic version. It is a harrowingly violent watch that feels horribly, palpably real. Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, the year after The Color Purple novel was published, for this coming-of-age drama set in the early 1900s.
It follows Celie, a working class African-American girl who is raped by her father and moves in with Albert ‘Mister’ Johnson, a widower who sexually abuses her. Celie has a younger sister, Nettie, who moves in with Mister until she is thrown out after refusing his advances.
Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule refuses to make a sad film. Instead, with brilliant success, he represents the reality of the lives of women who were systematically abused, sexually and physically. He finds their trauma and their lighter moments, sketching them as people as fully as you could imagine.
Celie is attacked in bed, but not long after she is belting out songs in the film’s more stylistic, fourth wall-breaking bits. ‘Superpower’ and ‘I’m Here’, both borrowed from the Broadway musical, offer interesting shades of pathos. We feel as she may have, experiencing music as catharsis; life is weird and after trauma we express ourselves in surprising ways.
Fantasia Barrino acts the kaleidoscope of emotion of someone who’s been raped by their father and other men. You can’t imagine how a face would look after this much trauma until Fantasia shows you how, slowly creasing her face in, her eyes and brows lowering with so much anguish that you worry the whole thing might cave in. Awards nominations are following but there could be more buzz. Taraji P. Henson offers something like light relief in the star turn as Shug
The Color Purple exists amid its own mythic setting. When it rains, it pours, drenching this corner of Georgia with a Biblical soaking
Avery, Mister’s Mistress, who reeks of glamour and privilege, but eventually forms a strong sisterly bond with Celie. Bazawule has her sweep up to Mister’s house in fabulous cars, disrupting the abuse with her Cheshire Cat grin. It’s a more straightforward role, but there’s a subtle depth: her glitzy clothes and confidence reveal the extent of Celie’s powerlessness. She gets some beautiful songs, not least the sublime ode to the tortured young girl, Miss Celie’s Blues.
Bazawule’s Color Purple finds its own shape when compared to the long-celebrated book. It isn’t just the music that’s audacious: even in atmosphere, it exists amid its own mythic setting. When it rains, it pours, drenching this corner of Georgia with a Biblical soaking, the kind of downpours you cannot see through. When it’s bright, the sun makes you want to close your eyes so as to not damage your retinas.
The end feels bizarrely neat, but Bazawule abides by the tone and script of Walker’s book. This reboot is a triumph that rightly leaves you shaken and overwhelmed.
Blitz Bazawule‘s adaptation of The Color Purple is in cinemas now
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