Movie: The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)
I saw The Color Purple on the day Quincy Jones died, which makes you appreciate even more what a titanic figure he was. In addition to shaping the careers of Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, and the trajectories of some of the most popular music genres, Lee Daniels may also owe him a thank you. This is one of the few major Hollywood classics I've seen that fits Daniels' counterintuitive sensibilities and I think it's not that much of a stretch to see Precious as a subversive version of The Color Purple. Both films feature horrific parental abuse, filtered through an aestehtic that is often antithetical to realistically communicating grave seriousness. It's just that Daniels' filter is campy explootation, whtle The Color Purple feels always on the brink of magic realism, or even full blown fantasy. Quincy Jones played a major role in that by convincing Steven Spielberg to come on as a director, despite concerns that he is not the right guy for a film about poor black folks in the American South. Jones's score however highlights his reasons for choosing Spielberg. Scenes of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) making breakfast or dressing Albert (Danny Glover) and his sons, are set to the kind of music that you'd more readily expect during the moment in a Christmas movie when a child is about to come down the stairs to see all the presents Santa brought. When you add Spielberg's characteristic childlike fairy-tale enchantment to that mix, Celie becomes something like a black Mary Poppins.
Of course, Celie is not supposed to be a governess, but Albert's wife, sold by her dad at the age of 14. In of the film's more ruthless moments, just after Albert buys her, Spielberg cuts directly to him walking home with a leashed cow by his side. It's an apt metaphor and during these early scenes, the film is unflinching and straightforward in its depiction of the horrors inflicted upon Celie and her sister Nettie, and rather uncomfortably harrowing. As a result it's incredibly disorienting when we jump in time to a grown up Celie (the first time we see Whoopi Goldberg on screen) in the middle of a scene that borders on slapstick. When preparing for work, a clumsy awkward Albert keeps descending the stairs, only to remember that he has forgotten his watch, tie or collar. Every time he comes back upstairs, he finds Celie quietly waiting to give him the exact item he's been missing. It's funny, and very much directed with comedic intent, but it such a sudden and unexpected shift of tone you are unsure whether you are supposed to laugh. Soon enough, the arrival of Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), the fiancee of Albert's oldest son Harpo, and Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) the local blues star, and Albert's real true love, confrims that the film indeed has more on its mind than just solemnly depicting black misery.
Perhaps it has too much on its mind, and its willingness to go into all kinds of improbable directions as long as it gets an interesting emotional reaction suggests that the musical adaptation may be the better fit for this story. The only truly consistent throughline is Spielberg's obsession with dysfunctional families. He gets to depict so many terrible parent-child relationships, all of them bad in distinctly different and uniquely perverted ways. Celie is continously raped by her dad and is forced to sell the babies she births to hide his crimes. Through a twist of fate these babies end up being raised by Celie's sister and her husband in Africa. Adolph Caesar is so aggressively hostile and hierarchical towards Danny Glover it took me a couple of scenes to realise that he is his dad rather than some sort of old foe/(business) partner out for humiliation. Sofia with her maturity and confidence becomes a mother figure to Celie, despite being her daughter-in-law. The same is true of Shug Avery, only she is bisexual and sleeping with both Celie and Albert, until she leaves them and returns with a husband. Shug herself has a complicated relationship with her dad, a priest who hates that she has abandoned church for a life of sin with blues musicians. This culminates in the film's absolute greatest scene, a musical duel between the church's choir and Shug's band that leads to a reconciliation of the two lifestyles.
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