Ok, I finally watched the movie the other night.
I know, it’s almost 20 years old. But I loved the book (and Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of my Familiar) and couldn’t bring myself to watch it before now.
I didn’t like it.
The acting was great.
The cinematography was stunning.
It all looked wonderful…and therein lies the rub. It wasn’t supposed to.
This was not a Southern chocolate box idyll. There was rape, lynching, incest, betrayal, spousal abuse, alcoholism, social injustice and racism. And it all looked too damn pretty.
The finale should have been a joyful relief after bleakness and tragedy. And it wasn’t. It was just some pretty icing.
Oh yes, it minimised the lesbian relationship of the main characters, made Mister too nice, and left out major parts of the story.
I loved both the book and the movie. I didn’t think it made Mister too nice so much as it made him nice too soon. (Remember that in the book
he and Celie become close friends after his religious conversion.
I agree with the frustration on minimizing the lesbianism, though. Supposedly, the original person offered the role of Shug was Tina Turner, who was hot from Mad Max and “What’s Love (etc.)” at the time, and she turned it down for fear that a lesbian scene might stall her very-hard-fought-for comeback, so perhaps that’s why they downplayed it.
To me, the last scene where the African robes blow into the air did come across as incredibly moving, and the “Sophia’s home now” dinner table scene is one of the most tense, hysterical, and dramatic I’ve ever seen in a popular movie.
Question … it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I thought …
…it wasn’t really incest because the man Celie thought was her father turns out NOT to be her father. Therefore, her children weren’t the products of incest.