The year is coming to an end with a happy surprise. Based on the hit musical directed by Blitz Bazawule, Purple is perhaps the most satisfying adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to date, as well as one of the most impressive films of 2023. In other words, he’s enjoying what co-producer Oprah Winfrey might call his best life.
This one Purple it unfolds with a rhapsodic ease and confidence that Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film never achieved — it was awash in awkward lyricism.
Here the singing and choreography take the story to another level that is more dreamlike and occasionally fantastical.
One track takes place on a huge phonograph, the other turns into a black-and-white fantasy that actually becomes a movie musical within a movie musical. Everything is closer to a fairy tale, shining innocence that shines at the center of the story.
But fairy tales are also full of suffering (iu Purple the pain to be endured reflects the bleak reality of black life in the Jim Crow South).
Celie (Fantasia Barrino), poor and unloved, is married to a cruel gentleman (To rustmagnetic Colman Domingo) and deprived of the friendship of her sister Nettie (whom she played in the first scenes Little mermaids Halle Bailey, who is stunning).
PEOPLE picks the 10 best movies of 2023, from Oppenheimer to Barbie and Purple
Henson as Shug Avery.
Sir Baffo
Then, after years of misery, Celie is almost magically lifted to a state of happily ever after by the arrival of Shug Avery, a singer and Mister’s old lover. Taraji P. Henson is magnificent in the role, as is Danielle Brooks as the fiery Sofia (played by Winfrey in Spielberg’s film).
Henson brings playfulness, sensuality and flirtatious humor to the film, while Brooks is defiantly sweet with a stunning gospel voice (she didn’t play Mahalia Jackson on Lifetime for nothing). They enrich Purple with what in the end are two harmonious forms of the human spirit, one giddily ignoring misfortune, the other plowing straight into it.
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Danielle Brooks (as Sophia) and Corey Hawkins.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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Henson and Brookes, both with their performances and the characters they play, overshadow Barrin’s sad, recessive Celie. Barrino, who speaks in a husky, papery voice, fails to make something eloquent out of the quiet calm of the role, unlike Whoopi Goldberg in Spielberg’s film. Barrino tends to disappear very well.
Then, finally, the former American Idol the house powerhouse delivers a solo track that echoes through the roof. She kills it.Purple is in theaters on Christmas Day.
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Source: HIS Education