This heartfelt movie-musical of The Color Purple sugars the pill and softens the blow, planing down the original’s barbed and knotty surfaces, taking away some of the shock of violence and tragedy and tilting the experience more towards female solidarity and triumph over adversity. But that’s perhaps part of a creatively emollient process that began in 1985 with Steven Spielberg’s powerful if bowdlerised screen version of the Alice Walker novel; the film was then transformed into a hit Broadway musical in 2005, which is now the template for this new adaptation.
There’s certainly an absolute powerhouse trio of female leads here, supercharging the action with their fierce charisma. Fantasia Barrino plays courageous abuse survivor Celie (the part originally played by Whoopi Goldberg); Taraji P Henson plays the singing star Shug Avery (Margaret Avery in 1985) and Danielle Brooks barnstorms the role of Sofia (in which Oprah Winfrey once made her film debut). It is written for the screen by Marcus Gardley and directed by musician and film-maker Blitz Bazawule, drawing on the novel and the Spielberg film and using Brenda Russell’s stirring musical numbers from the stage show which give the drama an even, consistent pattern of sugar-rush moments and choreographed spectacle. There are some very raunchy sequences in a darkened juke-joint as well as new inventions and redemptive character arcs. Spielberg, Winfrey and original composer Quincy Jones produce, and Goldberg has a nicely judged cameo.
At the beginning of the 20th century in Georgia, Barrino’s Celie is raped by her father, who takes away the two resulting children and callously gives her away in marriage to the superficially charming “Mister” Johnson, played with gorgeous but damaged roguishness by Colman Domingo. Celie is stunned when Mister furiously sends Celie’s sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) away when she comes to live with them but refuses to submit to his loathsome attentions, and Celie is moreover routinely humiliated by her husband’s utter infatuation with singer Shug Avery; she is his imperious mistress. After what appears to be a drink-fuelled breakdown Avery comes to live with them as a live-in patient, finally finding intimate friendship, and something more, with Celie. Meanwhile Mister’s son marries the indomitable Sofia, who is also to befriend Celie but whose spirit is crushed by racists. As the years and decades go by, Celie’s struggle to survive and to exist becomes more and more quietly heroic.
One thorn which this version snips away early on is Shug Avery’s bleary, nasty remark to Celie when she first arrives: “You sure is ugly!” That line vanishes and with it, some of the vinegar and spite which is later to be alchemised into their erotic relationship. This new version certainly keeps their love affair, but it is more romanticised, with fantasy Hollywood-musical dream sequences encoding physical rapture. This liaison is far more sedate and morphs quickly into a supportive sisterhood, while Shug’s substance-abuse issues are also dialled down. Then there is Sofia; Winfrey is a daunting figure to measure up to but Brooks manages it with style, and she is always a terrific live-wire on screen. But the injustice and cruelty (and physical violence) her character endures at the hands of white racists finally has a little less meaning in this version, and this is a plot point which is really rather defanged.
Plot strands are to finally tie up with startling serendipity, with magical family reunions which might put you in mind of Shakespeare, with some beach locations which draw on Julie Dash. There is warmth and vehemence in this movie, especially in the big ensemble numbers to which it gravitates so naturally, but it is less successful in the solo scenes and the evocation of loneliness and suppressed despair. This film, in fact, does the suppressing for us. Yet there’s no doubting the sledgehammer force of Barrino, Henson and Brooks as the three women who win out.
• The Color Purple is released on 25 December in the US, 25 January in Australia and 26 January in the UK.
