Movie-Color Purple: A Review



Movie-Color Purple: A Review

Title of the Play

The title of the heart-wrenching and universally loved is The Color Purple. The play is not really about the color purple. It's about the trials and tribulations of black women in the turn-of-the-century south, and how they conquered over all the abuse, the poverty, and the lack of anything resembling a life. And it's directed by Steven Spielberg.

Theater and Date of Performance

The play is also available at DVD. Whether this was Spielberg's most desperate attempt to win an Oscar (didn't work: The Color Purple received a whopping 11 Oscar nominations and won precisely zero) or a genuine kinship with the black women of the 1910s we'll never really know. But Purple is a solid enough film, though it lacks true inspiration and gets a little wandering and lost after an hour of running time (and you've still got 1 1/2 more to go!).

Review, Acting, Directing, Musical Selections, Scene Design, Lighting, Costuming, Makeup and Sound

It's easy to see why people fell in love with this film. It's got charm galore, it's wonderfully photographed, and the acting is top shelf. The only real problem is a rambling story (the book is actually a series of letters, often written to God, which was clearly a stumbling point in the development of a motion picture script), which careens from America to Africa and back again, crossing generations and leaving all but the most patient viewer a bit confused by it all. Sample the blurb from the back of the new two-disc DVD: Celie's "search for fulfillment in a world closed to her becomes a triumph of cruelty overcome by love, of pain eclipsed by joy." What the hell does that even mean!? The Color Purple just doesn't have the time to recreate Roots, and it ...