The Color Purple is showing tomorrow at AMC, I’ve never seen it. It seemed to be one of those Oscar bait ‘very important films’ when it came out, although admittedly my tastes weren’t exactly sophisticated when the film came out.
What do you think? It won’t cost me anything since I’ve got AMC movie pass and I’ll be on vacation next week, I certainly am not wasting New Orleans vacation time watching movies.
Or, will I be running to the bar for another $12 beer because I’m bored to tears.
Never watched it all the way through, so I can’t speak to the tedium. I have seen some entire sections, and I will say that some of the scenes can be very uncomfortable to sit through, not because they are poorly done, but because they are so well done. The pain seemed very real to me. So did the joy, when it finally came. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, for what that’s worth. Its IMDB score is 7.8.
It’s one of my favorite movies. I think I’ve only watched it from beginning to end two or three times, but I’ve watched certain scenes a million times:
Celie tells her stepson to beat his new wife to get her to behave.
Miss Shug sings a song dedicated to Celie and makes her feel special for the first time in her life.
Sophia knocks the hell out of Rae Dawn Chong and everyone starts fighting.
Sophia slaps that white lady and then she gets knocked out (and you can see her trying to pull down her dress even though she’s supposed to be unconscious, which always makes me laugh even though the scene is sad)
The dinner scene when Miss Shug tells Mister that Celie is coming with her. This is a scene that is in the top 10 best scenes of American cinema, IMHO. Everything about it is perfect. “Everything you done to me, already done to you.”
Miss Shug sings the hell out that song in church and her daddy starts loving her again. (Cool fact: It was actually a Puerto Rican woman named Tata who sang that song. I learned that tidbit from the documentary “Twenty Feet from Stardom.”)
Mumma!
It really has everything.
I had a coworker years ago. A white guy named Chuck. One evening we were working late and the two of us were going back and forth quoting lines from “The Color Purple”. He knew the movie inside and out and enjoyed it just as much as I do. So it isn’t a “black” movie, whatever the hell that might connote to you. It is a human movie.
I just recall that every single male character in the film was an utterly irredeemable, terrible person. Which doesn’t make it a bad film – it’s a very good film. But lordy.
It is one of my favorite movies, and I’m a white boy who saw it in the theater as a kid. But it is long, and often uncomfortable. It’s a drama with intertwined tragedy and hope and sentiment. It’s not a cheap thrill. So, what are you in the mood for?
The movie tells the story of a how a black woman overcomes the tragic combination of rape, misogyny, racial oppression, and domestic abuse. Although Celie is the protagonist and the story is told from her POV, other female characters are shown combating the same kind of issues despite having very different personalities and backgrounds. Shugg, for instance, is a minor celebrity in the community and is popular because of her confidence, charisma, sexual desirability, and musical talent. And yet she is estranged from her father because he can only see her as whore, and her dark skin disqualifies her from being “good enough” by the monied class (Mister’s father). Despite being the most liberated character in the story, misogyny and colorism hurts Shugg in a way that parallels Celie’s struggle.
As dire as the subject matter is, there is a beauty and grace to the film that keeps it from descending into oppression voyeurism. The score is a masterpiece. The characters are well developed and complex. Even Mister (the antagonist) is rendered with a little more nuance than the typical villain was in the 80’s. Do not believe anyone who tells you it is overrated. It is grossly underrated, IMO.
The movie also has a lot to say about colonialism and the misogyny of both Western and traditional African societies. Even though Celie is a meek, uneducated woman living in a rural backwater, her story (through her sister and kids) stretches over two continents.
I remember seeing it with my college girlfriend when it was originally in the theater. I thought it was very well-done, though, as others have already said, it is very intense in places. Probably because of the intensity, I never watched it a second time.
It took me years afterwards to come to like Danny Glover, as he had so effectively played a terrible person in Mister.
The film was nominated for eleven Oscars and did not win any. Furthermore, Spielberg did not get a nod for Best Director, despite turning a very difficult book into a fantastic movie.