The Col­or Pur­ple review – rides on its stel­lar performances

The cin­e­ma to broad­way musi­cal and then back to cin­e­ma pipeline is big news in Hol­ly­wood, CA, right now, with a glossy, toe-tap­ping new ver­sion of The Col­or Pur­ple com­ing to our screens mere weeks after a movie musi­cal update of high­school hit, Mean Girls, made its bow. It’s an under­stand­able com­mer­cial gam­bit: instead of repack­ag­ing a beloved sto­ry or a robust fran­chise prop­er­ty, why not at least bring a fresh twist to the table?

Yet in this instance, there’s some­thing vital that’s been lost in trans­la­tion, where the pri­mal polit­i­cal pow­er of Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-win­ning nov­el has been sub­vert­ed, dilut­ed and, sad­ly, soft­ened around the edges. There’s a lot to like in the film, and one would have to be excep­tion­al­ly untal­ent­ed to ruin the sto­ry out­right, but the con­stant­ly and sharply oscil­lat­ing tone doesn’t make this an easy one to love.

The sto­ry con­sists of a wrench­ing, con­ti­nent-strad­dling dra­ma set at the turn of the 20^th cen­tu­ry in post­bel­lum Geor­gia and focus­es large­ly on the treat­ment of women as chat­tel among a Black com­mu­ni­ty pulling them­selves back up from the atroc­i­ties of the recent past. Celie (Fan­ta­sia Bar­ri­no) and Net­tie (Halle Bai­ley) are sis­ters being brought up by their abu­sive, rapist father Alfon­so (Deon Cole), who quick­ly palms Celie off on a lech­er­ous wan­der­er nick­named Mis­ter (Col­man Domingo).

From the shrink­ing con­fines of an oppres­sive exis­tence ded­i­cat­ed to domes­tic and sex­u­al servi­tude, Celie tries to look beyond Mis­ter as her cap­tor and attempts to glean solace and lib­er­a­tion from the strong women pass­ing through, such as Mister’s fiery daugh­ter-in-law Sofia (Danielle Brooks) and the allur­ing jazz chanteuse, Shug Avery (Tara­ji P Henson).

Yet the bonds they’re able to forge despite every­thing are test­ed when the sto­ry reminds us of the era’s injus­tices – vir­u­lent racism, endem­ic inequal­i­ty, wide­spread pover­ty – a con­text that, while not being the film’s main focal point, offers a pow­er­ful reminder of the extent of the char­ac­ters’ strug­gles. In many ways, this is a sto­ry of how America’s prison indus­tri­al com­plex has his­tor­i­cal­ly vic­timised Black peo­ple, while also fram­ing the fam­i­ly as its own form of pen­i­ten­tiary, espe­cial­ly if you’re a woman.

The cal­cu­lus of adding dream­like musi­cal num­bers to a sto­ry that focus­es so intense­ly on the every­day trau­mas of young women grow­ing up in this place and time makes sense: they offer some lev­i­ty as well as visu­al­is­ing Celie’s inter­nal life and scup­pered aspi­ra­tions. Yet, the ques­tion still stands: does this sto­ry real­ly need these inter­ludes which so often serve to under­cut the dai­ly hor­rors that our hero­ine endures, par­tic­u­lar­ly after her beloved sis­ter goes AWOL.

Direc­tor Blitz Baza­wule does well to draw out mul­ti­fac­eted per­for­mances from his cast, par­tic­u­lar­ly Bar­ri­no and Brooks, and with them the big emo­tion­al beats all man­age to land well enough. Yet the musi­cal flights of fan­cy feel cre­ative­ly bound by the stage adap­ta­tion and lack a cer­tain eccen­tric pizazz. One sequence in which Shug and Celie head to the cin­e­ma and find them­selves with­in the movie they’re watch­ing is a show-stop­per that sad­ly lacks an equal. Strange­ly, it feels as if the defin­i­tive ver­sion of Walker’s extra­or­di­nary book has still yet to be made.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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