The Color Purple

The Color Purple is a film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker about a young black girl in '20's Georgia called Celie (Whoopi Golberg). She is used, brutalised, and rejected - "you got the ugliest smile this side of creation" -made pregnant by the man she believes is her father, then passed in marriage to another tyrannical male, Albert Johnson (Danny Glover). Early on, she is forcibly separated from her sister Nettie when the latter rejects Albert; Celie then languishes in the belief that her sister has died until Albert's lover Shug tums up.

This is about family and the strength of the bonds that are within a family. It's not about blood relations though - Celie's blood family prove to be fairly useless, but meanwhile her sister becomes part of a strong, caring family whom she has no relation with. The obvious message of this story is about the depravations and absolute agonies that blacks went through in America before the abolition of the slave trade. There is a trickle down effect of brutality from the white masters to the slave, and then to their families. Oprah Winfrey gives a famous performance as a very strong-willed, self-assertive woman who is broken by the whites.

Review by Julia Monelle
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95