Director: Blitz Bazawule
Stars: Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks
With a release that feels like it’s been delayed longer than some titles during the COVID-19 pandemic, Blitz Bazawule’s cinematic adaptation of The Color Purple Broadway musical – itself based on the acclaimed novel by Alice Walker – finally arrives with some of the most awkward timing in recent memory.
Not only does it debut amid the oft-accursed January release slate, it appears immediately in the wake of a disastrous offering with a strikingly similar pedigree. I am referring, of course, to the hellish Mean Girls reboot, also drawn from a successful stage show. This association – and the feeling of having arrived second passed the post despite being trailed for an eternity – might well harm the prospects of Bazawule’s film. Indeed, I went through those doors with some apprehension. But after a somewhat shaky start, this new version comfortably establishes its own credentials.
There were other reasons for apprehension. The idea of turning a generational tale of early 20th century Black trauma in the American deep south into a musical doesn’t immediately seem obvious, even if it has already proven itself successful. It feels like an invitation for some truly jarring tonal shifts. Secondly, Bazawule is far from proven as a filmmaker (though his efforts for Beyoncé’s visual mixtape Black Is King aren’t to be shrugged at). His 2018 feature debut The Burial of Kojo is little seen.
Yet in spite of a couple of transitions from traditional dramatic work to musical numbers that bump up against one another hurriedly, The Color Purple is an immensely assured production, boasting handsome cinematography from Dan Laustsen that favourably recalls Roger Deakins when working with the Coen Brothers, and some rather exemplary costume and production design work. This is, by and large, a tight and impressive calling card for Bazawule, one that will hopefully open further doors.
For those unfamiliar, The Color Purple chiefly tells the tale of Celie (Phylicia Peal Mpasi, later Fantasia Barrino), a downtrodden Black woman struggling through turn-of-last-century Georgia, USA. The mother of two children stolen away from her by a gruff and oft-absent father, Celie is sold cheaply into wedlock with local rogue ‘Mister’ (Colman Domingo), who appears to be seeking a maid he can knock around. Separating Celie from her beloved sister Nettie (Halle Bailey), Mister rules the roost with a bigoted, misogynistic fury, berating Celie for any and all failures or deficiencies he can conjure to mind. Over the course of the next 40 years, the tale weaves together the stories of a number of locals and family members orbiting Mister’s farmhouse, including his entrepreneurial son Harpo (Corey Hawkins), Harpo’s outspoken wife Sofia (Danielle Brooks) and Mister’s occasional flame, blues singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson).
From the outside it sounds like a sparse arena for the evocation of joy. And while few of the songs that pepper The Color Purple are memorable, most are well-mounted and well-performed, certainly with more flare for the visual than Cady and the Plastics version 2.0. Bazawule has some treasures in his cast who step up to the plate when called on. Barrino excels whenever a song calls for Celie to let loose her pent-up anguish and heartache, but this isn’t the only mode the movie plays in. Not at all.
With toe-tapping gospel evoked at the outset and a riotously horny mid-section taking place out at Harpo’s swamp-side dancehall (a “juke” to use the colloquial term), The Color Purple does its damnedest to counter the litany of violent misdeeds with ecstatic blasts of defiance and triumph, in turn reflecting how music has been a crutch for African Americans throughout a stormy and demoralising 250 years. The most righteous of these interludes is connected intrinsically to the story and is reserved for the opening of the film’s third act, when Celie’s fortunes have turned and she’s afforded the opportunity to open her own store. Here Barrino is served the chance to show Celie in all-new colours, and she veritably brings the house down. After so much misery, its a well-earned about-turn.
The always-great Colman Domingo is believably nasty as the bullying Mister, but it is the film’s trio of leading women who shine brightest. Henson takes top billing, yet appears sparingly. Still, whenever Shug is drawn back into the narrative her larger-than-life charisma makes the screen feel bigger. Best of all is Brooks as Sofia, whose broad sass is the counter to Mister that we long to see from Celie. Sofia’s fieriness is not without (unjust) consequence, however, and the way The Color Purple blithely skips through a six-year-long ordeal for her character announces one of its likely-inevitable flaws.
With so much material to cover from the source – and now with the addition of a songbook of musical numbers – this 40-year-tale was always going to feel compressed, even at 140 minutes. Try as he might to smooth out the edits, Bazawule’s adaptation feels like the galleys of a longer, larger, weightier work. It’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version. This manifests in the aforementioned hard collisions, but also in some fumbled exposition and the occasionally lacklustre establishing of key information. When The Color Purple bumps into such moments, it announces itself loudly, but by and large such instances are also the exception to the rule. More often the hurried skimming passes muster, and is more than made up for in other departments as already itemised.
There are unintentionally hilarious yet forgivable contrivances along the way to keep us moving at speed (a letter from Nettie is the most readily egregious of these), and insinuations of a sexual attraction between Celie and Shug are, if anything, underplayed, but The Color Purple circa 2024 is a handsome, earnest and giving production. It uses the contrivances of the musical to play the novel’s themes broadly, but it does so with passion and pride.
The Lost Highway Hotel 