‘The Color Purple’ movie review: Three terrific female leads deliver poignant movie magic
With a powerhouse cast and enchanting soundtrack, Blitz Bazawule’s film tells you of all the pleasures and horrors of being a woman, entices you with its captivating storytelling, but then pushes you back into reality with a dagger through the heart
(Originally published in The Hindu on March 08, 2024)
Critiquing cinema demands you experience it without any preconceived baggage; that you enter the hall as nothing more than a sponge that takes in everything before you make up your thoughts. That said, it is difficult to go in with a blank slate before watching The Color Purple this International Women’s Day.
Even if you haven’t read the books or watched the 1985 Steven Spielberg film, the promos are enough to tell you that it deals with sexual and domestic abuse endured by Black women in the early 1900s. So how does an unassuming viewer watch the film as a fictional piece when several gangrapes against women and girl children are currently in the headlines? When social media reeks of incels inadvertently proving the point with their heartless ‘not all men’ narrative? When the realisation dawns that even 100 years after the story is set, women and other gendered minorities are still not seen as the victims, especially with the many oppressive intersections of race, class, caste and religion still largely at play?
However, to see a hall mostly filled with women erupting in laughter while cheering and hooting at headstrong, fierce Sofia (Danielle Brooks) fighting the patriarchy and refusing to be a slave in a man’s world was enough of an indication that we were experiencing a work of art. Even though it doesn’t send you back into a changed reality, the film does pull you into a world more real than one could imagine and offers some respite by taking us on a musical journey that is in equal parts gut-wrenching and spellbinding….
Read the full review here: