Color Purple [Special Edition]

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There´s no escaping the fact that Steven Spielberg´s "The Color Purple" will be remembered for sharing the AMPAS´s (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) record for most-nominated-film-not-to-win-an-award. Those 11 nominations are all the more infamous because Spielberg was not nominated for Best Director, despite the fact that he received the Directors Guild Award for the 1985 calendar year. The film that swept 1986´s Oscar ceremony, "Out of Africa", is a story about a European woman who bosses African servants/slaves and becomes involved in a trifling love affair with a white hunter. "The Color Purple" is a story about the struggle to survive and the will to endure. Granted, a motion picture´s subject matter is only one factor to be considered when determining its greatness, but the sheer skill, poetic artistry, and genuine pathos exhibited by "The Color Purple" makes it one of the best American films of the past 20 years.

You´ll find a lot of people who talk about Spielberg´s "newfound maturity" beginning with 1993´s "Schindler´s List". I disagree with that assessment of the director´s career because the emotional and psychological pains that inform "Schindler´s List" can be found almost anywhere in his career, including "Jaws" (his second feature film effort), the "Indiana Jones" series (in which a grown man´s obsessive quests for archeological artifacts is an indication of his trying to live up to his father´s expectations), and of course, "E.T.". If you wanted to divide Spielberg´s career in half, you would probably do so with "The Color Purple", made a year after "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and before "Empire of the Sun", "Schindler´s List", "Amistad", and "Saving Private Ryan". Before "The Color Purple", Spielberg primarily made thrill-ride entertainments. After "The Color Purple", he has continued to direct "fun" movies as well as developed a sub-career of making films about the human condition.

The movie, based on Alice Walker´s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same title, tells the story of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), a woman raped by her father since she was a little girl. Essentially thrown away by her father to Mister (Danny Glover), Celie is forcibly separated from her sister Nettie. What follows is the story of Celie´s life, from having to raise children not much younger than her while under the thumb of a brutal husband to finally finding her own voice. "The Color Purple" is also the story of generations of black women. There´s Shug (Margaret Avery), the chanteuse loved by Mister. There´s Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), the wife of Mister´s son Harpo. There´s Nettie, who´s always somewhere in the background haunting the movie. While Goldberg and Winfrey have yet to match the performances that they delivered in "The Color Purple", they reveal just how great they can be when inspired.

"The Color Purple" is one of the finest displays of Spielberg´s virtuosity as a filmmaker. The film begins with a camera following Celie and Nettie while they play in a field of flowers. When they finally emerge from the tall plants, there´s a sad moment when you realize that one of the young girls is pregnant. I also marveled at the shot of a young Celie sitting down to read Charles Dickens´s "Oliver Twist". The camera focuses on a silhouette of her against the wall. When she stands up and comes back into the camera, she´s grown into an adult. Finally, in opposition to the rising moons in "E.T." and "A.I." and in parallel to "Empire of the Sun", there are numerous shots of a descending sun that are breathtaking. Cinematographer Allen Daviau, who also lensed "E.T." and "Empire of the Sun", deserves much of the credit for the film´s memorable visuals.

It´s true that Spielberg soft-pedals some of the moments in Walker´s novel. For example, the source book is much more explicit when dealing with sexual intimacy. However, Spielberg´s reading of Walker´s text reveals an understanding of human sorrow that is often heartbreaking.

Spielberg indicts the white community of the early Twentieth Century. The mayor´s wife, a Miss Millie, talks about helping "colored" children by giving them toys for Christmas, and she coos and tugs on black children´s cheeks. However, she superciliously suggests that Sofia should be her maid, leading to a tragic situation that results in Sofia being thrown in jail for 8 years. Upon her release, Sofia is forced to be Miss Millie´s maid anyway--yet another jail term for the once fiery, lively, and proud woman. The scenes involving Sofia are probably the most difficult for me to stomach, and I often had to look away from the pain that fills the screen.

The most poignant passage in the movie takes place beginning with the discovery of the letters that Nettie wrote to Celie since they were separated. As Celie reads her sister´s letters, the film cuts to her visualizations of Nettie´s descriptions of Africa. The most powerful of these cross-cuts occurs when Celie prepares to shave Mister. Editor Michael Kahn cuts between an African initiation ceremony and Celie sharpening a razor blade in anticipation of cutting Mister´s throat.

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