Review: 'The Color Purple' comes through with a heart that sings and a spirit that soars
After dire advance buzz -- no nomination as best musical from the notoriously eager-to-please Golden Globes -- “The Color Purple” hits theaters for the holidays and it’s all kinds of fabulous, featuring sensational singing-and-acting film debuts from Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks that are worth shouting about.
It’s not all good news. Vital things get lost when you soften the violence in Alice Walker’s 1982 novel about the Black female struggle against racism and male abuse in the rural South from 1909 to 1947. The rating is a safe PG-13, the lesbian love story is barely hinted at, and Black pain proves too large to dance away.
These same problems diluted Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film version, which earned 11 Oscar nominations but no wins for what some thought was a prettified take from mostly white creators that sanded off the book’s rough edges, despite real acting grit from first-timers Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.
Yet this musical, derived from Broadway productions in 2005 and 2015 in which Barrino and Brooks both appeared, shows how much music can add in the way the score by Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray and the late Allee Willis fuses jazz, ragtime, gospel, and blues to emerge as a powerhouse force against oppression.
OK, director Blitz Bazawule, the Ghanaian multimedia artist who worked on Beyonce’s “Black is King,” pushes the joy button too hard when screenwriter Marcus Gardley lays on the gloom, but when the two work in tandem, along with iconic choreographer Fatima Robinson, the operative word is wow.
Celie, the central character brought to steadily vibrant life by former “American Idol” winner Barrino, has suffered from childhood (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi plays Celie’s younger self), after being raped and twice impregnated by her father Alfonso (Deon Cole) who sold their two children into servitude.
Later, Celie is forced to wed the abusive Mister (a standout Colman Domingo finds a sliver of redemption in a monster) whose lust for her sister Nettie (a vibrant Halle Bailey) causes Nettie to flee to Africa as a missionary.
Mister curses Celie -- “You Black, you poor, you ugly, you a woman” -- but he can’t kill her dream.
The adult Celie finds comfort and sisterhood with two women. First, it’s Sofia, embodied by Brooks in a tour de force of untamed spirit. Her roof-raising solo “Hell No,” a stinging rebuke of Mister when he tries to set the rules for Sofia marrying his son Harpo (Corey Hawkins), practically explodes off the screen.
When Sophia does prison time for sassing a white woman, it’s wrenching to see the light go out of her. Can anything stop Brooks from owning her spotlight on Oscar night? Hell no.
Taraji P, Henson crushes it as bisexual singer Shug Avery, a part-time lover to Mister who finally gives Celie the love she’s long deserved. Just watch Celie’s eyes sparkle as Shug brings down the house with “Push Da Button.”
Sadly, the film runs from their intimacy, turning their duet to “What About Love” into an overproduced showstopper shot on a giant gramophone turntable.
Still, the filmmakers deserve praise for taking Celie off the sidelines, as she often was on stage, and filtering the plot’s key moments through her vivid imagination. When she finally lets loose with her climactic aria “I’m Here” -- sung live to camera with no lip-synching -- a top-notch singer is reborn as a resplendent movie star.
There’s won’t be a dry eye in the multiplex when Celie finally stands up to Mister and reunites with her real family.
I could reiterate the bum moments when the film trips up on its own too muchness, but why complain when “The Color Purple” ultimately comes through with a heart that sings and a spirit that soars.
