The 2023 movie incarnation of The Color Purple is this year’s Doctor Sleep. Both are extensions of 1980s Warner Bros. movies built on conceptually paradoxical creative aspirations. Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan aimed to adapt a Stephen King novel, be a sequel to the most famous King adaptation of all time, and address that horror author's criticisms of The Shining. Similarly, director Blitz Bazawule wants to make sure this new Color Purple film restores key elements of Alice Walker’s original book (namely the queer material involving the film's protaganists), properly adapt a stage musical, provides a big Christmastime spectacle movie for Warner Bros., and be a loving tribute to the original 1985 movie. Being pulled in so many contradictory directions ends up resulting in a disjointed feature, but the best moments of The Color Purple do capture why this particular story has endured for so many decades (beyond Warner Bros. executives wanting to capitalize on familiar brand names).
The Color Purple, for those unaware, concerns the life of Celie Harris-Johnson (played as an adult by Fantasia Barrino), who initially navigated the trials of everyday existence with her sister, Nettie (Halle Bailey). The two are separated after Celie is forced to be a wife to Albert "Mister" Johnson (Colman Domingo), an abusive man with evil in his heart. As the years wear on, Celie endures endless strife but is also given glimpses of a wider, more beautiful world beyond the walls of Johnson's house Many of these peeks come from traveling singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson) as well as the outspoken personality of her friend Sofia (Danielle Brooks). Through her bonds with other women, Celie clings to the truth that there is more to life than the torment she's suffered.
Bazawule's approach to filming The Color Purple is to have the performances pitched in a manner evocative of classical mid-20th-century musicals. This influence also extends to the fantasy backdrops of certain musical numbers, such as a lovestruck Celie singing about a bathing Avery on a gigantic record player or those same two characters harmonizing on a glitzy 1920s dance floor. These digressions away from reality harken back to similar sequences in Oklahoma! or Singin' in the Rain, where stylized sets and fantastical backdrops encapsulate the vivid emotions of key characters. Even scenes firmly set in "reality" often feature crowds of extras ready to go to start dancing at a moment's notice, even if all everyone is doing is nailing up advertisements. Considering modern musicals like The Little Mermaid tend to strip away all bombast in favor of "realistic" musical numbers of a guy just singing on a hill, such homages to classic musicals in The Color Purple are more than welcome.
However, the visuals of The Color Purple, unfortunately, betray those old-fashioned tendencies. Bazawule and cinematographer Dan Laustsen have opted to shoot this title with digital cameras and exceedingly bright lighting that just makes everything look too plastic and artificial. Classic mid-20th-century musicals tended to make the spectacular feel like something you could reach out and touch. This new Color Purple oddly contradicts its vintage influences with imagery that feels distractingly modern. There are lovely touches in the camerawork of The Color Purple, including one scene that clearly functions as a homage to one of the visual motifs of Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust. However, the sterile digital look of things does undercut the film's commitment to realizing this story in a manner evocative of vintage musicals.
Marcus Gardley's screenplay, meanwhile, also struggles to satisfactorily balance out classical and modern impulses. Whatever incarnation of The Color Purple you're watching, it's going to be a brutal story that puts its characters through endless hardship. Gardley's script preserves that but it also wants to evoke mid-20th-century musicals in its very arch depictions of human emotions (a quality carried over in Bazawule's direction of the actors). Harrowing displays of anguish are rapidly followed up by people dancing while nailing up signs and vice versa. Some of these intentional shifts in tone do work nicely in communicating ideas like how often joy in Celie's world can vanish in an instant or, in the case of Sofia's storyline, how white people can make everything worse in the blink of an eye. Still, too often Gardley's script seems to be caught between a desire to engage in emotionally raw material and the spectacle impulses innate in musical numbers. The result is a film that sometimes feels disjointed in tone rather than intriguingly nuanced.
The greatest saving grace to this version of The Color Purple, though, is quite simple: the actors are great and when it comes time to put on a show, the movie delivers. The connective tissue getting there is wonky, but performers like Fantasia and Danielle Brooks belt their hearts out whenever their big numbers come up. If there's anything that helps save a messier musical movie, it's simply delivering when it's time for people to harmonize. Plus, the best tunes in The Color Purple really lend a bullhorn to the inner voices of these characters, in the process showcasing the humanity that the world wants to erase from women like Celie. These grand sequences, then, function as an interesting new interpretation of Alice Walker's original work. This 2023 The Color Purple looks towards music to reaffirm the enduring spirit of the downtrodden, which is a sense of perseverance that's always defined this yarn. That's an interesting way to utilize the language of musical cinema to make an old story feel new, even if The Color Purple's execution of its musical impulses (particularly visually) leaves a bit to be desired. But hey, it’s unspeakably tough to make a remake/sequel built on so many contradictory artistic impulses. Just ask Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan!
No comments:
Post a Comment