Director Report Card: Steven Spielberg (1985)

12. The Color Purple

By the mid-eighties, Steven Spielberg was an enormously successful filmmaker. He was a critically acclaimed filmmaker, who had been nominated for a Best Director Academy Award three times. However, it was debatable whether or not Spielberg was an important filmmaker. His films were ones of fantasy, of popcorn movie spectacle. He didn't tackle real world topics or themes of weighty historical significance. That would change in 1985. Alice Walker, author of Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Color Purple," was talked into approving a film adaptation of her seminal work under the stipulation that she have tight control over the script. Quincy Jones, a producer on the project, talked an initially reluctant Spielberg into directing. Apparently, a screening of "E.T." convinced Jones that Spielberg was the man for the job. It would be the first time the director put his stamp on a socially relevant drama, winning praise and attracting controversy in the process.

Celie Harris is a black teenager living in rural Georgia in 1903. Sexually abused by her father, who has conceived two children with her that he's subsequently sold, the only friend Celie has is her sister, Nettie. At fifteen, Celine's father essentially gives her to an older man as his wife. Calling him Mister, he is equally abusive to Celie as her father was. Nettie comes to live with Celie and Mister but eventually flees after he tries to rape her. Growing into a meek woman, Celie forges friendships with Sofia, the wife of Mister's eldest son, and Suge, his jazz singer mistress. They experience the trials and tribulations of being black women in the early 20th century. In time, Celie will be reunited with the sister she lost. 

More than anything else, “The Color Purple” is an ode to black sisterhood. The important relationships Celie forges throughout the film are with other women. Suge begins as a rival, denouncing Celie as ugly, but they soon becomes friends and more. She resents the fiery and independent Sofia at first, before seeing her as an inspiration on her own march towards freedom. Obviously, her actual sister, Nettie, is the most important bond of all. Though she's off-screen through most of the film, Nettie is a figure that looms large over most of the narrative. When Celie finally recovers her letters, it's like being reunited again. “The Color Purple” shows black women lifting each other up, supporting one another during a time when they didn't have anyone else to protect them.

“The Color Purple” does not back down from showing the level of abuse women, and women of color especially, dealt with as a simply fact-of-life during this time period. Celie is introduced being raped by her father. She has no say over what happens to the children who are created by this abuse, the man selling them for a profit. “Mister” approaches her father looking for a bride, essentially looking to buy himself a wife. When he won't be given the prettier, younger one, he accepts the older, homelier sister as a second choice. Mister doesn't want a partner. He merely desires a slave to clean his house, cook his meals, raise his children, and vent his sexual desires upon. “The Color Purple” is a fictional story but the constructs put in place to insure that women remain docile objects to the men around them were all too real. Young girls were used by their fathers and then their husbands, going from one form of oppression to another.

Horrible conditions like this were not unique among women of color in the isolated areas of the early 1900s. “The Color Purple” is a feminist story above all else, about women and the perils they faced. Yet it specifically reflects the black perspective on these struggles, which brings with it a whole other reality. We see this most clearly in Sofia's subplot. She begins the film as a fiercely outspoken woman, who refuses to kowtow to her ineffectual husband. She stands up to everyone around her and that includes the white folks. Inevitably, the power structures of the time strike back at her. She is eventually brutally broken by the deeply racist system, reduced to a shell of her former self. It's a heartbreaking transformation to watch, a sad fact of the time period that would have been impossible to ignore when telling this story.

At times, one is tempted to dismiss “The Color Purple” as “misery porn,” the “Push” of its time. While the sheer fact that these things happened keep that instinct at bay, Walker's approach is ultimately a little more nuanced than that. The men in this story are, by and large, monsters. Celie's father was a monstrous abuser. “Mister” is similarly awful. Yet the film at least acknowledges that these men are trapped in poisonous systems of their own. Mister is so used to having a subservient female around that he doesn't even know how to clean his house or cook his own meals. When Celie steps out of his life, he's quickly living in squalor. His father is a bullying asshole, his son reduced to a quiet, meek little man whenever he's around. Mister's oldest son, Harpo, attempts to emulate his father's hateful actions, to little effect. These guys were brought up to believe that this is how men were suppose to act. Though undeniably vile in their actions, they were victims too. 

Spielberg's film does not shy away from the horrors in this story. The film's depiction of sexual assault is especially bracing and difficult to watch. Yet, ultimately, one has to ask if this was Spielberg's story to tell. There are times when the approach you associate with Spielberg as a director feels utterly out-of-touch with the material here. When Harpo opens a juke joint, it leads to a scene of strangely farcical physical comedy. In fact, Harpo's entire subplot – which involves a lot of domestic abuse, least we forget – feels horribly miscalculated. Ultimately, the mistreatment Celie faces in the first half of the film sets up her victorious overcoming in the last third. It lacks a certain grit, that a story this dark probably required. You come away from the film unavoidably feeling like Spielberg was not a good match for Walker's story.

Maybe Spielberg was just doing what was expected of him. Quincy Jones' score also shows a mawkish emotional sense that is often at odds with the darker needs of the story. A more subtle score, that was less obvious about the feelings it was trying to evoke, probably would've helped the film a lot. This is not the only apparent discomfort Spielberg and his team had with the material. Walker's novel took the story's themes of sisterhood to their most obvious conclusion. In the text, Celie and Suge are a lot more than just friend, eventually becoming lovers. This subplot is trimmed way back in the film, reduced to a single scene and never really brought up again. It's yet another example of how this material probably would've been better handled by a director who was female, black, or preferably both.

It's not that “The Color Purple” is a bad film. It's actually pretty good, in a lot of ways, simply because Spielberg and his team are extremely good at their jobs. Allen Daviau's cinematography is gorgeous, the use of sunlight in the exteriors and shadows in the interiors creating such a keen sense of mood. The production designs, the costumes and sets, are all top-notch. Michael Kahn's editing is brilliant. This is most clear during a fantastic sequence that cuts back and forth between events in Africa with Celie seriously considering slicing Mister's throat, Suge rushing into the house to stop her from committing murder. The razor being sharpened across the strap builds tension so expertly, the audience drawn into this moment. It's a masterclass in how to build suspense and bring the viewer into the character's head. If all of “The Color Purple” was that good, the entire film would be a classic. 

The cast is up to the challenges of the script too. This was Whoopi Goldberg's proper acting debut, following a bit part in an obscure art film. She was primarily known as a stand-up comic at the time, making a heavy dramatic role like this a hell of a leap. Goldberg does give a fine performance though. By the time Whoopi enters the film, Celie has already been broken. She inhabits that meekness, projecting the aura of someone totally terrified to make even the smallest movement or sound. Someone who has been living with that pain and fear for so long, they don't know any other way of doing things. Watching Celie grow out of that isolation, to discover her own strength, is inspiring. Goldberg truly proves her chops as a dramatic actress, doing a fine job.

She's not the only black icon in the film who isn't primarily known for acting. Oprah Winfrey, who filmed her scenes here months before launching her daytime talk show, plays Sofia. It's easy to see why Winfrey became such a force of personality on TV, as she makes Sofia a thundering force of nature that can't be repressed. At least at first anyway. Watching that spirit get broken is among “The Color Purple's” most heart-breaking elements, largely thanks to the sheer willfulness Winfrey brings to the part. Margaret Avery is also excellent as Shug, a perceptive woman who performs both when singing and for the people around her. Danny Glover is also impressive for managing to find some humanity in the film's most despicable character, without downplaying the horrible things he does.

Walker's source novel has been described as an epic and it's a fitting label. The story covers someone's entire life, threading its narrative needle through the experiences of half-a-dozen other characters along the way. Though mostly centered on a small rural town in the American south, its plot eventually stretches to the African continent as well. It's a worthy story structure but not always one well suited to a feature film. “The Color Purple's” epic instincts eventually stretches into a belabored last act that feels the need to resolve every conflict in the story. I don't know if we needed all the details about Celie receiving her childhood home back, following her father's death. Or Suge resolving her own issues with her preacher father. The story definitely feels more-or-less over after Celie stands up to husband and ventures out on her own. 

Ultimately, “The Color Purple” is a noble effort. The film should've been made by a black director and a woman at that. The story reflects the sensibilities and concerns of black women too keenly for anyone else to truly do it justice. However, it's unlikely that a women of color filmmaker would've gotten a greenlight in 1986. Spielberg is probably one of the few directors with enough commercial pull to get this story made at the time. It's a handsome motion picture and well done in many regards, enough so to earn eleven Academy Award nominations. (Though no wins.) I think Spielberg's sentimental approach to the material betrays the movie some and that Walker's novel maybe would've been better served by a television mini-series format. A new film version, adapted from a popular stage musical based on the novel, is forthcoming. Perhaps that'll make up for the mistakes made here. While “The Color Purple” is by no means a bad movie, it does feel like a story that could've been better told by another talent. [Grade: B]