I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.--Alice Walker, The Color Purple (also in the film)So I watched The Color Purple with my friends today, a 30-year-old movie that I have never seen, with Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Avery, and a fine overall cast. It had an excellent story (based on the book of the same name by Alice Walker), had beautiful cinematography, music, and acting (especially considering it was Whoopi Goldberg's first film role)--it really should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and in fact it was nominated for eleven awards that year, winning none. In fact, A hasn't deigned to watch the Oscars ever since it lost out to Out of Africa, believing it to have been snubbed, even though it was both a critical and commercial success. I have not read the book (although I have a paperback of it somewhere around here), but I gather it is even more unforgiving in its portrait of sexism and racism. Some critics say the film is too sentimental by comparison. The same was said of The Help, although I thought it did a pretty decent job, deviating in small ways. And as difficult as 12 Years a Slave was to watch at times, of course it does not do pure justice to the utter horror of slavery.
Each of these films deals with the black experience in the South, and each deals with racism in their own ways. One thing I appreciated from The Color Purple was that it was a woman's story of surviving yet finding her voice in the wake of abuse. The women in the film are its backbone. Yes, there is the sense that, according to the film, all men are utter pigs, and that's perhaps too much of a generalisation. But it is a story that is believable, and it is a story that inspires emotion and thought. And that, along with its execution, makes for a very good film.