'The Color Purple' Review: Black Excellence Uplifts Fantastic Musical Update of Alice Walker's Novel
PG13: Mature thematic content, sexual content, violence and language
Runtime: 2 Hours and 20 Minutes
Production Companies: Harpo Films, Amblin Entertainment, SGS Pictures, Quincy Jones Productions
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Blitz Bazawule
Writer: Marcus Gardley
Cast: Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, H.E.R., Halle Bailey, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, David Alan Grier, Deon Cole, Jon Batiste, Louis Gossett Jr.
Release Date: December 25, 2023
Exclusively In Theaters
Since its release, Alice Walker's beloved 1982 novel, The Color Purple, has seen several iterations. Everyone and their mamas know the 1985 Steven Spielberg-helmed adaptation starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey (robbed of every Oscar it didn’t win). I came up when the Broadway musical hit NYC in 2005. I vividly remember seeing ads for it at every subway station when Fantasia Barrino played Celie in 2007. I keenly wanted to see it, but my nine-year-old self couldn't afford it. Some fairy godmother up there, Oprah perhaps, listened to my plea and made those dreams come true through a feature adaptation. Granted, it took 16 years, but it’s better late than ever.
Set in the South in 1909, Celie's (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi/teenage, Fantasia Barrino/adult) abusive, pedophilic father takes her second newborn baby away. He sells her as a wife to Albert "Mister" Johnson (Colman Domingo). There, Celie is constantly abused and forced into the housewife role. Her only solace is her intelligent, innocent sister, Nettie (Halle Bailey). After their dad tries to touch her, Nettie moves in with Celie and Mister. One night, Mister tries to force himself on Nettie, and she escapes. Before she flees into the unknown, Nettie promises to write to Celie every day.
Still subservient to Mister as decades pass, Celie longs for the day she’ll see Nettie again. Shortly, free-spirited women enter Celie's life: Sofia (Danielle Brooks), a rowdy, outspoken woman married to Mister's son Harpo (Corey Hawkins), and bodacious Blues musician Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), with whom Celie develops a loving connection. Through them, Celie's low spirits rise as she gradually learns how to stand up for herself and find her joy.
Since Tom Hooper's nightmare-fueled felines made their film debut, I have found many Broadway-to-feature adaptations to be in a rut. Except for In the Heights and West Side Story, the genre has become more routined than rousing, lacking imagination and showmanship. However, The Color Purple director, Blitz Bazawule, provides that very exuberance desperately missing within the genre. From the first opening number to its finale, The Color Purple's numbers operate on limitless vibrancy far too captivating not to be swept up by. Bazawule's direction bears the same striking pizzazz as the classic animated features Disney wishes to capture again. His composition spotlights the larger-than-life scale and the epicness of the countless dancers, adding liveliness to each number. Funny enough, he spent several months drawing storyboards during pre-production, a process most notable in the animation process. Yet, this is the most animated musical of the past decade.
Witnessing a Black musical production of this magnitude is a rarity. Although I want to avoid giving brownie points for representation's sake, I couldn't help but get choked up from seeing hundreds of Black artists passionately pour their signature talents onto this project. Whether it be musicians in the background at Harpo's juke joint or the background dancers in every number moving gracefully in unison to Fatima Robinson's incredible choreography, everyone hoists the film's extravagance and defines what makes a musical feature so memorable.
Bazawule takes grand creative liberties in several numbers, particularly "Dear God - Shug'' and "What About Love," where he integrates vivid dreamlike imagery evoking a classic cinema aesthetic, losing the theatrical identity and making it feel more cinematic. As Celie belted about her overflowing queer feelings, my mouth was agape at the artistry poured onto the screen with a powerful depiction of same-sex Black love hardly expressed in a studio space.
The cast comprises talents who either reprise their roles from the Broadway play or are stars finally able to use their singing voices in ways we have never heard before. I didn't know Taraji P. Henson and Colman Domingo had pipes. Now I wish Henson sang on Empire as Cookie—a number where she’s having a fit and kicking ass. I love how Domingo’s range wavers between portraying a wise gay elder or the most detestable piece of shit straight male ever put to screen, for he had my stomach churning with dread whenever Mister is onscreen.
The entire cast is on the same wavelength of excellence, but the alums Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks are outstanding for capturing such boundless grit and conviction in their roles.
How the hell is this Fantasia's first feature role? She steps into Celie like a well-worn shoe while advancing her skillset, like learning to tap dance to bring her transition onto the big screen as epic as Celie's. Even under this newfound cinematic landscape, Barrino delivers a riveting rise to power and evokes such moving resilience with grace and beauty. By the time she sang “I'm Here,” the best she had ever sung it, Barrino transported me back to 2004, crying the same tears after she won American Idol. As if that wasn't enough, on my second viewing (when I took my mom), those same tears returned, and my mom had to hold my arm to get me through it. She is, without a doubt, one of the year's best-leading performances. I don't often mention the Oscars in my reviews, but it would be criminal for them to overlook this performance. This is a remarkable film debut and a reminder of Fantasia's endless significance. My dum dum peers at Critics Choice made that mistake; I hope the Academy doesn't.
While The Color Purple is Celie's story, Danielle Brooks is the M.V.P. of the film. Her performance as Sofia is INSTRUMENTAL to the story. She comes in like a breath of fresh air, illustrating the type of free-spirited, remarkable woman who carries the spirit in Celie's resilience. Her "Hell No" number is still aces. But her journey and arc navigate the shared struggle between the sisterhood in her, Celie, Shug Avery, and Squeak (H.E.R.). Watch out for her laugh alone because it's the most cathartic laugh I've ever heard and brings the color back when the film is at its bleakest.
Given the mature, tragic nature of The Color Purple's story, it's wild that this is a musical in the first place. Its tonal whiplash between the straightforward depiction of Celie’s abuse has you switching those happy-sad theater masks. There are bouts of her enduring Mister's cruelty for endless years, long after Sofia and Shug tell her not to take his shit anymore. Celie's rise to power would've been more believable with a condensed timeline. While the issues lie within the tone, I did find this tale about the significance of sisterhood and Black female joy and liberation to be as powerful as Spielberg’s adaptation.
Capturing the essence of the Broadway show in a vivid, cinematic format, Blitz Bazawule's The Color Purple is a dazzling adaptation full of energy, elevated by its exceptional Black female cast, artists, and breathtaking filmmaking.
