Sundays with Spielberg: 'The Color Purple'
Spielberg wasn't ready for this yet, nor was he the right choice.
Hi all, just a quick programming note. I’m moving publication of the weekly newsletter to mid-week starting this week, as it will give me more time to digest what I’ve seen and write about it over the weekend. So, Wednesday or Thursday of this week, keep your eyes open for a new Chrisicisms. Sundays with Spielberg will stay on Sundays.
We’re entering an interesting period in Spielberg’s filmography. Following the mega success that stretched almost unbroken from “Jaws” to “E.T.,” with a brief step into controversy with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” the director set his eyes on less fantastical, more grounded fare.
The last half of the 1980s is filled with films that may have seemed, at first blush, far removed from the thrills of “Jaws” and the wonder of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Aside from a third Indiana Jones adventure in 1989, these films represented an attempt by Spielberg to be considered a more mature director, even though by now he’d been nominated three times for best director, with several best picture nominations under his belt.
First up was his adaptation of Alice Walker’s beloved 1982 novel “The Color Purple,” whose adult themes were a far cry from adventures and thrillers that populated Spielberg’s early career. Walker’s novel told the story of a Black woman named Celie living in Georgia in the early 1900s who undergoes horrific abuse throughout her life. Walker’s novel included themes of abuse, incest and sexuality that studios typically were not interested in tackling, and the director is not the first name that comes to mind to helm such a dark and grim story. Spielberg knew this and confided in producer Quincy Jones that he felt he was the wrong choice to be shepherding the story; Jones pushed, and Spielberg ended up behind the camera.
The film was a box office success, bringing in $142 million. It was also critically acclaimed, with Roger Ebert calling it the best film of 1985. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, and two Best Supporting Actress nominations. Spielberg, however, was snubbed, and the film remains a mixed mark on his filmography, with some praising his human direction and others arguing that he brings too much sentiment to Walker’s bracing novel, as well as the argument that a white man was the wrong choice to tell a story centered on the sufferings of Black women.
Everyone’s a bit right on this one.
A beautiful, horrible tale
“Newseek” film critic David Ansen famously called Spielberg’s adaptation “the first Disney film about incest,” and while that’s a stinging bit of criticism, it’s not too far off the mark (even though it was released by Warner Brothers).
Celie’s life is often an exercise in suffering. She grows up with a father who rapes and impregnates her and then forces her to give the babies up to a local family. She’s married off to the abusive Mister Albert (Danny Glover), who resents her because he wanted to marry Celie’s sister, Nettie. Albert uses her when he’s horny, abuses her when he’s mad and otherwise leaves Celie to cook, clean and care for his household, which includes several unruly children.
Over the course of 30 years, Celie endures Albert’s abuse quietly while clinging to the brief glimpses of beauty in her life, whether that’s a quiet chuckle at her husband’s incompetence or stealing away to read Dickens. While timid and quiet, she finds strength in the women who surround her, be it Nettie; Albert’s longtime flame, singer Shug Avery; or the outspoken Sofia, whose own story of suffering might be the most gripping and heartbreaking thread in the movie.
At this point in Spielberg’s career, “The Color Purple” is his darkest film, dealing with subject matter that’s a far cry from the suburbia of “E.T.” And the director acclimates well to more mature storytelling, for the most part. The film is gorgeous, thanks to Allen Daviu’s cinematography, which captures the beauty of the sunlit Georgia fields, and Quincy Jones’ score — the rare Spielberg score not composed by John Williams — is energetic and eclectic, mixing in jazz and gospel to celebrate Black American music. A scene that takes place in a juke joint operated by Albert’s son Harpo is one of the film’s liveliest moments, as is a scene of reconciliation between Shug and her father, in which the chasm between secular music and religious worship sets a backdrop for healing.
Spielberg works with perhaps one of his strongest casts, which includes the debut of two women who would go on to become icons. As the adult Celie, Whoopi Goldberg is miles from the smartass persona she’s famous for. In her first feature role, she packs decades of heartache into Celie’s stoic demeanor, communicating years of sorrow in just a glance. But when Celie smiles, it’s its own special effect. Goldberg, in a role where she doesn’t speak much, does some of her strongest and most emotional work here, and it’s not only apparent why she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, it’s frustrating that she didn’t win (she would, of course, go on to collect a Best Supporting Actress trophy for “Ghost”).
Even more noteworthy, though, is the actress Spielberg discovered for the role of Sofia, a strong woman eventually crippled by abuse and racism, with her own heartbreaking arc. The director cast Oprah Winfrey in the role, just years before she debuted her iconic talk show. Winfrey has been such a formidable presence as herself over the decades that it’s easy to forget she is a strong actor as well (see also “Selma”). Sofia’s story could make for its own film, and Winfrey — who was also nominated for an Oscar — cycles through a life’s worth of emotions and experiences.
Glover is also remarkable as Albert, blending charm with sinister violence, as is Margaret Avery as Shug Avery, the singer who is pined after and doted on by Albert and becomes a source of joy, friendship and confidence to Celie. A young Laurence Fishburne also has a small role (credited as “Larry”) as Harpo’s best friend and co-operator of the juke joint.
Walker’s novel is an epistolary construction, told through letters between Celie and Nettie and between Celie and God. Menno Meyjes’ script weaves these threads together, with narration carrying the heavy load of getting us into Celie’s head; it doesn’t always work, but the cast does solid emotional work to carry it over the gaps. The film is beautifully shot, and few director’s are better at delivering emotional crescendos. Spielberg knows how to deliver a sledgehammer to the heart when Celie discovers a wisp of paper that reminds her of her sister, and he crafts a tension-filled moment straight out of a silent horror film in a scene where Albert pursues Nettie down a tree-lined trail. Spielberg, in his most overt attempt at making “serious” films up to that point, acquits himself well, delivering a film that is beautiful to look at and emotionally evocative.
But Spielberg also keeps the film from being great.
Not ready for the job
Much of the controversy surrounding “The Color Purple” concerned Spielberg’s changes to Walker’s novel which, admittedly, I have not read. Most notably, he pulled back on an overt sexual relationship between Shug and Celie, changing it to something more platonic, even though the two do share a chaste kiss. Spielberg also leaned more heavily into sentiment than horror; he often shies away from showing the most brutal and horrifying abuse inflicted on Celie and others, but also piles on the emotion, creating something less stark and more uplifting. In the HBO documentary “Spielberg,” the director notes as much, saying he intended to make a film that was more hope-driven (the reconciliation between Shug and her father was not in Walker’s novel).
But it’s also quite possible Spielberg was not at the point where he could make a hard film that wrestled honestly with Walker’s material. While a skilled craftsman and conductor of emotions, Spielberg had yet to prove he could unpack heavy, nuanced material that stared at some of humanity’s darker truths. There’s a bad tendency Spielberg has of undercutting drama with humor, most notably in the way the clumsy but abusive Harpo is constantly the victim of slapstick pratfalls. Spielberg flinches from the darkness or tries to defuse it — in another moment, he cuts the legs out from under a dramatic scene involving a Christmas reunion for Sofia by inserting shots of her employer struggling with her car — and the sense is one of a director eager to deliver catharsis but unready to delve into more complex matters. The Spielberg of 1985 made the best movie he could; a Spielberg who had already made “Schindler’s List” and “Munich,” however, would have made a much different film.
And it doesn’t mean “The Color Purple” is a bad movie. It’s a beautiful, compelling and moving film, and its performances are truly remarkable. But the piled-on sentiment and overt emotional manipulation create a film that feels classical and staid in places, instead of emotionally raw and honest. It’s what you expect from a prestige Oscar bait. It’s good, but there’s an emotional honesty that is missing. What works, works well, but it makes what’s missing all the more noticeable.
And maybe that’s because Spielberg, for all his good intentions and skill, was simply the wrong person to adapt “The Color Purple.” He can tell a story of dramatic reversals and heart-rending stakes, but while Spielberg respects the story he’s telling, there’s never an element that feels personal. There’s none of the understanding of familial strife that gives “Close Encounters” and “E.T.” their weight. And while Spielberg’s love of B-movies and serials fuels “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” his classical approach here seems to be a way of escaping material beyond his grasp. And as a white man directing a story that is very much about Black characters and, very specifically, about Black women, he never finds the specificity or personal take that could make the story as powerful as possible.
But then again, what studio would have entrusted a Black female actor to tell a story of this scope in the 1980s? (Really, very few studios would approve that today). And while Spielberg doesn’t deliver the definitive version of “The Color Purple,” his version is still often extremely effective and powerful. It’s a film from a filmmaker in transition that reveals both his strengths and weaknesses.
Previous Sundays with Spielberg entries