The Color Purple (film)
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Steven Spielberg |
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| Distributor | Warner Home Video |
| Honors | |
| Steven Spielberg, proving he’s one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker’s novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg’s decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable—from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children playing in paradisiacal purple fields to the way he conveys the brutality of a rape by showing… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Steven Spielberg, proving he’s one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker’s novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg’s decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable—from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children playing in paradisiacal purple fields to the way he conveys the brutality of a rape by showing hanging leather belts banging against the head of the shaking bed. In a way it’s a shame that Whoopi Goldberg, a stage monologist who made her screen debut in this movie, went on to become so famous, because it was, in part, her unfamiliarity that made her understated performance as Celie so effective. (This may be the first and last time that the adjective understated can be applied to Goldberg.) Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including best picture and actress (supporting players Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery were also nominated), it was quite a scandal—and a crushing blow to Spielberg—when it won none. The digital video disc requires flipping to play the whole movie. —Jim Emerson
Barnes and Noble
The Color Purple was not it familiar territory for a moviemaker whose glittering screen career had relied so far on man-eating sharks, flying saucers and extraterrestrials. Yet, in the end, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel transcended his other works, in part because it was so different. Whoopi Goldberg gives a heart-breaking, Oscar-nominated performance as Celie, a Southern black woman who in the early years of the 20th century finds herself a slave within her own home—married to a violently abusive sharecropper (Danny Glover) and still suffering the loss of her sister, from whom she’d been forcibly separated when they were young girls. The script dips and soars through a series of poignant, sometimes melodramatic vignettes involving racist mobs, illicit love affairs and religious salvation, the latter scenes backed by a clapping and stomping gospel choir. Through it all Spielberg effectively captures the small but crucial victories of the human spirit which punctuate the story and make for an original and uplifting film. Bruce Kluger
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Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to “Mister,” a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
