Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple

[Hal2001]

The Color Purple (1985)

From two-time Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg comes an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Color Purple." Of course, this was before Spielberg had won his Oscars, back when he was still most known for "Jaws," "E.T.," and a little movie called "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) is the daughter of a cruel father (Leonard Jackson). Her only friend in the world is her sister, Nettie (Akosua Busia). When Albert (Danny Glover) comes to ask for Nettie's hand in marriage, her father gives him Celie instead. This only continues Celie's hard life as she is forced into a loveless marriage from which she cannot escape. As the years pass, she makes new friends like Sophia (Oprah Winfrey), who ends up marrying one of Albert's sons, though only for a short time. She also gets to know Shug (Margaret Avery), a woman whom Albert has a crush on. Some of these relationships stay together while others break apart as Celie struggles to survive her harsh life.

This was the last of the famous Spielberg films that I had not yet seen, mainly due to lack of interest and a look of heavy melodramatics about it. Having finally seen it, I have to say that I was disappointed that it didn't turn out better, especially with such a good cast, but there were just too many problems to give it a recommendation.

Starting from the beginning, the film immediately throws us into the emotional turmoil of Celie's life without giving us time to get to know the character first. This makes it rather hard to form an emotional bond with her at all as she goes through her terrible ordeal with her father and then with Albert. Without that emotional bond with the character, it becomes difficult to care about what they are going through.

Stemming from that problem, there is little to no character development throughout the entire film. Celie knows that her life with Albert is terrible, yet she does nothing to change it, and doesn't even try to leave him. Where would she go, you might ask. She could have tried to track down her sister, assuming she tried to do so before Nettie left for Africa, or she could have tried to find her friend Shug, with whom she formed a very close bond with when she was staying at Albert and Celie's house. The little bit of character development that does occur comes in the film's greatest scene (more on that later), but by that point, we wonder what has taken her so long to realize that she needed to leave Albert, no matter what.

One thing that seemed completely out of place was all the comedy that is thrown in. This film is a drama; a very serious story that has no room for such silly nonsense. However, there are several scenes that feel like they are out of a slapstick comedy film like when Albert's son, Harpo, falls through roofs throughout the film, making it into some kind of running gag. Then later, there are a few scenes of a woman just learning how to drive a car with people dodging out of the way as she goes down zigzagging down the street. Some of these scenes were funny, like watching Albert attempt to cook a meal, but they just seemed very inappropriate for this film.

Now that the negative stuff is out of the way, it's time to concentrate on the positive parts, like the great performances. This was the feature debut of Whoopi Goldberg. Now, the nerd in me wants to say that she is most known for playing Guinan on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," while the film snob in me wants to say she's most known for her Academy Award-winning performance in "Ghost." Both are great examples of her acting ability. For her role of Celie she was nominated for Best Actress of 1985. Not too bad for a first feature performance. With this performance, she showed us that she had the ability to handle heavily dramatic roles like this. Makes you wonder how she ever ended up doing "Hollywood Squares."

Whoopi was really good, but the most powerful performance in the film comes from Oprah Winfrey. This was her first performance as well, but for someone who is known to millions as a talk show host, who knew that she could act? She gives her character a kind of strength that sets a bar for women in the film. She doesn't take any sass from anyone. If someone hits her, she hits right back, as shown in her marriage with Harpo, and again when a man hits her in public. She is taken to jail, and when she gets out, her character has changed completely, becoming very quiet, slow-moving, and distant. But the power of her character is not meant to be subsided for long.

Now to the scene I mentioned earlier. There is an extraordinary scene in the last 30 minutes of the film where Celie, Sophia, Shug, Albert, and others are having dinner. In this scene, Shug turns to Albert and calmly says that Celie is coming with her and her husband. "Over my dead body," he says. "Is that what you want?" she coldly replies. Celie finally joins in, stating exactly what she thinks of Albert, finally having the courage to break free from his oppression towards her.

After she tells him off, someone begins laughing at the table. We are surprised to see that it is coming from Sophia, who has sprung back to life after Celie's burst of dialogue. "Sophia is home!" she joyously says. If the emotion in this one scene could have been extended out into other scenes in the film, then this could have been a really special movie, but the filmmakers chose to bottle most of it up into this one scene, very late in the film.

This film really could have used more emotion high points like the dinner scene because it felt like it was supposed to be a very emotional film, but due to the lack of emotional bonds with the characters, very little character development, and the strange addition of comedic scenes, it came off as a strange mix of things held together by a very thin plot. It is very hard to completely condemn the film though, as Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey's performances are incredible to watch. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea for these two to get back together for another film. 2.5/4 stars.